Mass Effect: Brothers in Arms
by blackswirlycloakguy
Summary: Shepard's made a career out of doing the impossible. Defying the Catalyst, she decides to fight, or to die. But can she live with the deaths that now stain her conscience? Alternate ME3 ending fic. Ignoring Extended Cut and Leviathan.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect, Bioware and EA do. **

**A/N: Like virtually every Mass Effect fan, after finishing ME3 I was hit by sudden disappointment. It was like I'd been handed a perfect meal, with an incredible starter and main course and then suddenly at the very bottom of the splendid dessert I found a piece of dog shit. It wasn't a great moment. **

**So, like virtually every Mass Effect fan, I said 'Fuck this shit, I'm writing my own ending.' And here is the first part of it. This will be a multi-chapter fic with a fair bit of action in (because I hate superweapons on principle). I don't know how often I'll update because my computer has currently lost its lead, and I don't expect to get a replacement for several weeks by which time I'll be back at the grindstone of work. **

**Some necessary background about my Alice Shepard: She's Colonist Sole Survivor, mostly paragon with a huge saving people thing and a renegade streak (because that's the best sort of paragon). She romanced Liara, stayed true to her all the way through, and bromanced Garrus and Wrex, and more recently Vega. Ashley died on Virmire. Pretty much all her choices were paragon (Saved Maelon's data, saved the geth and the quarians, etc.) save her saving of Aralakh company over the Rachni and her choosing Morinth over Samara (because she got angry – she's got a horrible temper and often says things she regrets). Also she got the maximum possible War Assets before heading anywhere near Earth, and didn't lose anyone on the suicide mission. She likes 20****th**** and 21****st**** century music and movies. **

**Also thoughts are in italics. **

**Prologue: No Fate but what We Make for Ourselves**

It took a while before things clicked.

The child – the Catalyst – had appeared to her, offered her three choices. Three impossible choices, choices that made her aching head burn just to consider them.

The Catalyst had told her that with the Crucible she could do what the Illusive Man had wanted, what he'd said – take control of the Reapers, make them do whatever she asked of them; she could tell them all to take a swim in the core of a star and they happily would. Of course, there was the obvious disadvantage of the destruction of the Mass Relays, which would at the very least set back galactic civilisation by several centuries, and at worst would destroy the systems the Relays were in – the image of the ring of devastation spreading across the galaxy map after the Alpha Relay's destruction spreading itself in her imagination across system after system, destroying everything that she'd worked to save. Not to mention the risks of merging with Reapers as a whole.

Then there was option two – synthesis, as the Catalyst called it. Merge all synthetic and organic life, create some sort of hybrid of the two based on her own construction. Again, this would involve her death, and again for some reason the destruction of the Mass Relays. In addition there was no saying what this new hybrid life would be like – and she knew that no-one would want this forced on them, no-one. It reeked too much in her mind of the modifications Cerberus had made to her, and while they had no doubt saved her life, she wouldn't wish them on the Reapers themselves.

The last seemed like the best when you looked at it straight away. Destroy the Reapers, destroy all of them forever and ever. Except it also killed all synthetic life-forms in general – EDI, the geth, it didn't matter. Legion's sacrifice would have been for nothing, her philosophical debates with EDI – all of it wasted. Especially as the Mass Relays would, once again, be detonated.

Her whole life Commander Shepard had made a career out of finding another option. She'd survived Akuze, taken down Saren, and gone through a suicide mission without a single casualty. She'd fixed age old enmities and made them alliances. There _had_ to be another way. There had to be.

She ran through the options again. She was growing dizzy, and she knew that if she didn't choose soon she wouldn't be able to – her medi-gel had run dry long ago, and her armour was scorched and melted onto her. Blood ran down her face. The pain had stopped being sharp, but it lurked in the back of her mind, a dull throb ready to rise and overwhelm her.

_Surely it's simple. Surely the only way to honour the sacrifices of so many dead is to ensure the Reapers' deaths. This is what they fought for. Do it! _

_But_, murmured another thought, _but you'll end one genocide with another. The geth aren't just robots any more, and EDI, EDI who trusts you, who reminds you so much of a sister, and Joker, who's stood by you through everything. Oh how you'll be repaying them. Not to mention anyone with any form of cybernetic enhancement. And we haven't even approached the devastation caused by the destruction of the Mass Relays. _

_But the galaxy will be free. Maybe the whole universe. The Reapers will be gone, and surely after all that we've built it won't be too challenging to build a Mass Relay. The good of the many – but then again you've never thought about that. Let's face it Shepard, you're selfish. So selfish. You'll choose those who you know personally – it's why you saved Aralakh Company, why you cured the genophage, why when you got the information about the Shadow Broker you went running to Liara instantly, not waiting to give the ship its vital repairs. You just can't face dying again, being separated from her again. Do the right thing for once_ the voice hissed at her, _save everyone who's died_.

She almost staggered towards the console. Almost. _I...I can't do it. I can't wipe out all synthetic life._

_Synthetic life..._her head was echoing. A solution seemed so close, so very close. If she could just rest...just rest for a little while. _Make tremendous sacrifices...I can't, Liara. Goddamn me, I can't do it. Goddamn me but I want to, I want to go to that place with you, so far away no-one could find us, I want the little blue children. I swore I'd always come back to you. I can't end all synthetic life. _

_Synthetic life..._

And suddenly, so suddenly it hurt, her brain swung into gear and she had a plan, a real solid plan.

'No fate,' she gasped. The words slipped from her mouth involuntarily.

'What?' The child shape of the Catalyst flickered in front of her.

She grinned, the taste of blood sharp in her mouth. 'No fate but what we make for ourselves.'

With an effort of will she forced herself to stand up straight, bones aching, body afire with pain. 'It's an old quote from an old movie, but that's not the point. The point is that things always seem set in stone, but with enough willpower, with enough tenacity, you can change them.' For half a moment she forgot what she was trying to say as another wave of pain swept over her. Then she remembered.

'So. Here's my choice: fuck you. Fuck your fucking mindgames, fuck your stupid ideas. I don't care what you were made for, what you made the Reapers for, or whatever pansy-ass choices you were programmed to offer me.' The words were spilling through her now, all the rage that she had kept under control as she saw a million burning worlds was released from the dam that had held it back.

'We'll fight the Reapers ourselves, on our own terms. I don't care if we end up like the Protheans, fighting to the last man, because that'll be our fate, from start to finish, ours. So fuck you. I'm Commander Shepard, and I make my own destiny.'

Her hand shot to her communicator. 'Admiral Hackett, do you read me? This is Commander Shepard. The Crucible is a trap, I repeat, the Crucible is a trap. I require immediate evac from this position – the Citadel's a fucking Reaper. Admiral Anderson is seriously wounded.'

The communicator hissed '...Shepa...ker...n our way...Hold...' The words whined away into static as the child-shape in front of her frowned.

'We had hoped that you would have had the mental strength required to make this choice. This is the way things must be, Shepard. You know this.' For a moment the child seemed to grow huge. Its voice echoed and distorted, layered and familiar – this was the voice she had heard from Harbinger, from Sovereign. From the Reaper dying on Rannoch. It echoed in her head, deep and low and menacing in its rumbling.

'We will find another.' Then the Catalyst disappeared.

Shepard sank to the ground once more, then hauled herself up again. Anderson lay unconscious nearby and with effort she staggered towards him. Bent down.

_Come on Shepard. _The voice in her head was softer now, no longer so insidious. _You can do this. _

She wrapped her arms around Anderson and with a grunt and heave lifted him across her shoulders. Almost instinctively her biotics flared up to prevent her knees from collapsing under the weight.

Then the ground beneath her shook and she almost collapsed again, knee thunking into the hard metal floor, spots dancing across her vision. Familiar blackness moved across her eyes.

_No! I won't give in. No fate..._

She struggled up – _but what we make for ourselves. _

* * *

><p>Flight Lieutenant Jeffrey Moreau had thought the worst day of his life had been over Alchera.<p>

He was quickly revising his opinion.

'How the hell is that thing still on my tail?' he shouted, looking over his shoulder, half expecting to find the Reaper that had been pursuing him for the past half hour in the cockpit, blaring in his ears. 'I mean, not that I'm not flattered.' For what seemed like the millionth time he flung the Normandy into a spin as red fire lanced towards it, moving aside without losing any momentum. 'But there's only so much I can do at once.' His hands flew across the haptic interface, lining up the next set of manoeuvres. Even through the artificial gravity he felt the Normandy flip up like a roller coaster, turning back to face its pursuer. _Almost...and now!_ His hand hammered on the fire control and twin streams of blue punched from the Normandy's nose and deep into the Reaper's heavily weakened shields. For a moment they were held back, then the accelerated ceramic punched through like a needle and smashed into the hard black shell of the Reaper. With a whoop Joker flipped the Normandy back into its previous path but not before firing a pair of Javelin Missiles that tore into the hole the Thanix Cannon had made, ripping the Reaper apart.

'That's what, seven Reapers I've killed now? Does the Normandy have some sort of badge on it saying "Hey, Reapers, this is Commander Shepard's ship – please shoot" – oh shit.' The Normandy danced out of the way of an exploding turian cruiser. 'How's the communications' blackout EDI?'

'I am currently tasked to capacity preventing electronic intrusions into the Normandy's computers. However, what communications I've intercepted and managed to decode indicate that while Hammer suffered over fifty percent casualties, all squad members on the Normandy's ground team – or who have been on the Normandy's ground team in the past – have survived, though some are critically injured.'

'And Shepard?'

'There is still no word of Commander Shepard, or Admiral Anderson, though the opening of the Citadel's arms and a fragment of communication I have intercepted from Admiral Hackett indicate that at least one of them is alive.'

Joker spared a second to glance across at EDI. To anyone else she would have sounded exactly the same as ever, but her normally dulcet, gentle and sexy voice – _goddamn it Flight Lieutenant, focus_ – was tinged with a hint of worry. And if he was honest with himself, he was pretty concerned too – it had been several minutes since the Crucible had aligned itself with the Citadel, and still nothing had happened.

'How are the fleets holding up then?' He flicked his fingers and a squadron of Oculi vanished in a flash of blue.

'The fleets have suffered overall casualties of eleven point two four percent casualties by my last set of calculations. Further breakdown is – ' She stopped suddenly. 'Incoming communication. The signal indicates it is from Commander Shepard.'

Suddenly there was a hiss over the communications channel. 'Admira...read me? This...Comm...epard. The Crucible is a trap, I rep...is a trap. I req...immediate evac...adel's a fucking Reap...derson's seriously wounded.' Broken up and distorted, it was still clearly Shepard, defying the odds once again and surviving the impossible. Joker couldn't have kept the smile off his face if he'd tried. Until he actually thought about her words, but that could wait.

'Commander Shepard, this is Joker. We're on our way to pull you out of the fire once again. Hold tight. Normandy out.' He closed the channel the pumped the fist and let out a little whoop. _The Commander's alright..._then he frowned. 'Hey EDI, what was that about the Crucible being a trap?'

She turned her head to him. 'I am not certain Jeff. The communication was distorted by the signal jammers the Reapers are using, but –'

Suddenly the Normandy shook, and as Joker peered at his displays he noticed something. As obviously had every other ship on the battlefield.

'The Citadel...Christmas tree!'

'...goddamn Mass Relay...'

Joker's eyes suddenly widened. Then the first Reaper disappeared near the Citadel with a whoosh of light.

'They're bugging out. The Reapers are bugging out!'

More and more Reapers were pulling away from combat towards the Citadel, disappearing in pulses of blue light. But as they did so they left themselves open, and gathering itself together the greatest fleet that this cycle had seen pounced on them.

Geth cruisers spat millions of tiny fragments of metal a second, so many it seemed like a constant stream, that wore down the shields of the huge mechanical monsters. Turian frigates launched missile after missile, knocking down weaker shields and destroying unshielded Reapers in huge barrages, while Asari dreadnoughts provided a covering fire of sorts, smashing the Reapers and stunning them as much as possible. Human fighters pounded Oculi, preventing them from taking on the larger ships, while larger ships stood toe to toe with the smaller Reapers that had been dubbed 'Nymphs' by the ground forces.

In minutes, the number of Reapers destroyed over Earth doubled. Their designs left them unable to fire and retreat, and while they tried to cover each other the overwhelming command from their master left them uneasy and prone to simply obey, backing towards the Citadel. This was how Harbinger met his fate, racing towards safety, when he was intercepted by a wave of superheated and accelerated ceramic focused at a single point. He'd already suffered overwhelming fire, but this was the end. As it accelerated towards him he found a channel from the ship had been opened and heard an organic on the other end ask him whether he knew that the attack hurt him. Harbinger had enough time in the seconds it took for the ceramic to burn through his outer shell and into his drive core to attempt to hack back through the channel, fail three times and then begin a reply before he detonated in a flash of light.

'Make that eight Reapers EDI, including the big guy.' Joker's smile grew wider as he pushed the Normandy to its maximum speed as it shot towards the Citadel, dodging around one black and red shape after another. _I'm not going to let the commander die on my watch again. Never again. _

* * *

><p>Shepard took another shaking step as the Citadel once again rumbled beneath her. At first she'd been able to see through the windows as she headed down towards an extraction point – but then she'd reached darkened corridors, and then she'd stopped caring as all that mattered had become keeping one foot in front of the other, keeping Anderson on her back.<p>

She didn't know when she'd stopped using muscles to hold him up and started just using biotics, or when the blood that had merely been trickling from her nose had become a full on flood. She couldn't say how she'd managed to break her leg – or whether in fact it had been broken before, and she'd only just noticed because of the yellow white bone peeking out of her armour.

_Just keep going. Liara'll be waiting for me. _She tried to suppress the part of her brain that told her that Liara had been standing awfully close to her when Harbinger's beam hit. _And then...then we'll go somewhere away from here, far away...somewhere cool and green. With mountains. And water. Somewhere no-one can find us, where there's no war – wait, with some ruins. Liara loves – _

The metal floor beneath her pulsed once more and she found herself collapsing to one knee. _Get up, _she screamed at it internally, _get up, you lazy piece of shit. _Her thoughts had somehow become her drill-sergeant's voice on the third day of basic. _Do you want what happened to your parents to happen to others? Oh you do, because I don't see you moving. Up! _She staggered upright once again. The pain was immense, but that appeared to be a permanent state of things now. A little more didn't hurt.

The floor shook again and she collapsed again. _What is this, battlemaster, defeated by a station? A soft one too – never liked the Citadel. _Grunt's voice growled in her head. _We defeated a Thresher Maw, on foot, and fought the damned Rachni. You can stand up, can't you? _

Staggering, she clawed upright again. And promptly collapsed as the floor shook even more. It was a steady dull vibration now, like the engine of a ship. _This is ridiculous, Alice_, purred her thoughts. _Turians might not know how to duck, but we definitely know how to stand. Come on, Shepard, you can do it. It's just a corridor. It doesn't even shoot lasers, or rockets. You can outshoot me, you can definitely make it down here. _

She didn't even try to stand this time. She simply dragged herself, slowly and carefully along the floor, keeping Anderson on her. There was a strange rushing in her ears and a pulsing in her thoughts, something just out of reach, a high whining note in her head, whispers plucking at her mind.

_I've never known anyone stronger than you Shepard_. The voice was soft, and for a moment all was calm. For a moment, Shepard could swear she saw blue skin, brilliant blue eyes.

_I'm coming Liara. After all this time I'm coming home to you. _

Slowly she stood. One leg first, knee bent, then as it began to straighten the next. The doors of perception suddenly seemed to have opened around her, and she could see the Normandy, beautiful and shining and coming towards her over hundreds of miles to bring her home. But she could also see the last of the Reapers vanishing into the distance as it was swept up in the Mass Relay field, see the build up of energy around the Citadel.

After her rebirth, Cerberus had gifted her with biotics. At first she hadn't a clue how to use them – but more than a year of sitting around on Earth had given her plenty of practice. And in particular she had mastered one technique she had seen a traitorous spectre named Tela Vasir use.

With an effort, Shepard turned herself and Anderson into pure biotic energy and charged through the corridors towards the Normandy.

She rematerialised and ran straight into a wall, a gasp bursting out of her throat as the pain she had thought couldn't get worse swelled around her head. With a grunt, she threw herself into another charge.

This time as she came out she felt her ears burst under the pressure of the blood that had been stuck behind them, and collapsed to the ground, silence echoing around her.

She couldn't do it. Shepard was finally beaten.

The floor shook mightily suddenly, and she knew that this was it, that the Citadel was now about to do what no other Mass Relay could – transit itself, through itself. And she would be sucked along for the ride.

And yet through the earthquake, the wind and the fire, a small voice spoke into her. _Use me. _

Time slowed. Her heartbeat seemed impossibly loud, the air charged with lightning. For some reason she found a smile split her face. Biotic energy gathered around her, building up to levels that she'd never even seen before, and still it grew, gathering behind her and round her, boxing her in and caressing and healing her. The floor split beneath her, crumpling and blackening. The walls warped towards her as the glow around her increased more.

Then with one final push she was gone, speeding away across the miles like they didn't exist and down, down to the Normandy, Anderson across her back.

She rematerialised inside the cockpit behind Joker. He spun to face her, face wide in surprise and alarm.

'Anderson needs immediate medical attention,' she somehow managed to say through the blood. 'I need transport down to –'

Then the Normandy shook as a brilliant blue light dazzled her from outside its windows and she fell sideways, whatever had sustained her suddenly disappearing as quickly as it had come and then she was deep into the blissful blackness of unconsciousness.


	2. 1: Gunslinger

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect, or the song the title of this chapter is based on, or any of the quotes I use. **

**AN: When I receive all the notices of the alerts, favourites and reviews such a warm and fuzzy feeling entered my heart that I dived to my computer and pounded what was left of its battery into the ground by writing this. Thank you to all of you for your support. **

**EDIT: Edited this after realising I meant to do some things that I didn't, and that I suck at writing Liara. Which is a pity, because I'm planning to do so a lot. Oh well...**

**Chapter One: Gunslinger**

_She wasn't surprised to find herself in the woods, mist twining between the trees. Like great skeletal hands they clawed overhead, reaching towards a sky they could never reach. _

_Whispers ran from tree to tree, pecking, nibbling at her mind. _

_And in the distance was the boy. She found herself running to him almost on instinct, her movements horribly syrupy slow. Just like before. Just like always. Her hands were reached out towards him. I can help you! _

_But unlike normal he wasn't moving. He just stood there, waiting for her. Watching her. Watching her come closer through the whispers and silence. _

_A hand suddenly fastened itself around her arm._ Come on, Shepard, you're going to be late.

* * *

><p>Liara woke to a taste of ash in her mouth and a pounding in her head that from her experience spoke of hitting it too hard. Her Alliance uniform that she'd worn on every mission she'd been on since the Reapers had arrived was torn and burnt and as she tried to push herself upright she felt the shift within the flesh of her right arm and burning pain that signified that at least one bone was broken.<p>

Cradling it across her chest, coughing, she managed to stand. There was noise all around, a strange whooping, along with gunshots. The sky was clogged and grey, but there was no sign of Harbinger or any other Reapers. For a moment the memory of the heat of Harbinger's attack as it passed by her filled her memory, her and Shepard desperately –

Shepard!

Suddenly the daze that had cloaked her hearing and thoughts vanished, like mist at the touch of sun, and she straightened, checking her communicator. It was so much crushed metal, as was the N7 Hurricane submachine gun and Scorpion pistol she'd carried into battle. The whooping suddenly seemed coherent as –

- _as cheering. _

Suddenly the lack of Reapers in the sky, the lack of the Citadel Transport beam and the slow dispersal of the cloud above made sense in a way it hadn't before. They had won. _Shepard must have reached the beam – must be fine. _Her thoughts calmed themselves. Her beautiful, strong, headstrong Shepard was still alive.

Or was she? Doubt suddenly nagged at Liara tugging at her brain. Where was the Citadel then, why was there still gunfire? What had happened to the rest of Hammer? With a frown she drew her biotics round her into a barrier. There were shapes in the distance clearly recognisable as Husks, and while many were stationary, and those that were moving were milling rather than charging, it was best to err on the side of caution. Other shapes were visible through the dust now, the huge silhouettes of Krogan, firing with impunity at the Reaper forces, accompanied by the smaller figures of humans.

With a jolt Liara realised that some of them were carrying stretchers.

_There must be injured. And injured I can help with – and at a hospital there __will__ be communication. Communication I can use to find out where Shepard is. _

Her feet and body aching, Liara dragged herself towards the distant shapes.

* * *

><p>Admiral Hackett was by the accounts of his men a tactical genius, a fighter easily able to best a Krogan, and able to run faster than a leopard. Of course he knew this was gross exaggeration, but he'd never felt it more strongly until this campaign had begun. He'd had to think like a chess player – sacrificing ships, fleets, planets, sectors to set things up for the end-game he wanted – the end game he'd needed, if humanity, if the galaxy, were to survive.<p>

And it hadn't worked. His queen, his trump card, the Crucible, had fallen through. Billions of credits, the greatest scientists of over five species, and it was all apparently a trap.

But in another way it had. Earth was under control of what had been dubbed 'The Galactic Alliance' in the official reports and 'The Galactic Republic' by a certain Flight Lieutenant who watched too many old movies, and what Reaper forces remained on the surface were being mowed down like wheat before the scythe. Without the guiding intelligence of nearby Reapers, the husks they'd created seemed directionless, either hopelessly hostile, charging armed platoons who gunned them down easily before they reached their lines or failing to react at all to the constant attacks that hit them. In the battle in space despite horrific casualties they'd dealt the Reapers a bloody nose – and now they were on the back foot, having by all reports to have retreated into Dark Space again with the majority of their forces, leaving none behind in the Sol system.

Which lead him to where he was now, standing in the communication room of the flagship of the fleet, trying to find out what had happened out there. Why had the Reapers retreated? How was the Crucible a trap? And what the hell had happened to the Citadel?

But first one more question had to be answered before these others could be resolved.

'Doctor Chakwas, how are they?'

'Admiral Anderson's lost a lot of blood, and is suffering from severe burn wounds and a gunshot wound. He also appears to have a case of mild eezo poisoning, commonly seen in those who aren't biotics and are exposed to the ability known as 'charging'. However, with continued care he should make a full recovery with little difficulty.'

'And Shepard?'

Before him, the holographic shape of Doctor Chakwas bent her head. 'It's – complicated. On the surface her wounds are much worse than Admiral Anderson's – two compound fractures of the lower right extremity, severe burns to the chest from where her armour was melted onto her, severe contusions and a brain haemorrhage from overextended biotics. On the other hand...' She paused, her mouth thinning, her brows creasing in a frown. 'However I believe I should hand over to EDI for the next part.' She stepped aside and for a moment the communication device was little more than a square of blue static, then a figure that Hackett had only read about in reports appeared. There was something disconcerting about the body of the Cerberus Infiltration AI that EDI now inhabited, some way in which it seemed to enter uncanny valley. He could remember only too clearly asking Shepard for assistance with a rogue VI on the Moon itself just over three years ago.

'Admiral Hackett, do you know how Shepard and Anderson came into the Normandy?'

Hackett felt the stirrings of doubt that had started to swirl within him rise. 'I had assumed that she was picked up from the Citadel shortly before it disappeared.'

'That was incorrect.' EDI seemed to straighten slightly. 'Perhaps this security camera video from the bridge of the Normandy may be of assistance.'

The image of the AI flickered, quickly replaced by footage of the back of a ergonomic pilot's chair and a series of haptic interfaces. Barely visible within the chair was a hat and a pair of arms, fingers flying across the orange glow of the controls. For a few seconds the picture remained the same.

Then there was a sudden rumbling and in a flash of red light two figures appeared – one slumped across the other's shoulders. Both were severely injured. Hackett's mind raced, but before he could finish his conclusions, the picture faded, revealing EDI once more.

'In case you are wondering Admiral Hackett, yes, Commander Shepard did biotically charge onto the bridge of the Normandy across a distance of well over five hundred miles.'

For a moment the sheer shock of the statistic froze Hackett's thoughts. Biotic charging had become an ability all new Vanguard classified soldiers were trained in for its extreme effectiveness in disrupting enemies as they moved into cover. But the greatest distance that had been measured for a charge was a mere two hundred and fifty metres, and that had caused such severe burnout that the soldier in question had been killed shortly after. There had been reports of an Asari Justicar who could charge up to a kilometre, but as he'd also had reports of the same Justicar crashing spaceships solely with their biotics he had assumed they were exaggerated.

Shepard had torn through both of those statistics like a dreadnought through gas-bags.

Then suddenly it struck him. 'Hold on. Biotics are blue – element zero creates a blue field when an electric current is passed through it. That – that was red.'

EDI nodded. 'Perhaps this feed from my own personal cameras will be of further assistance.' Once again a video segment started, this time solely of a haptic interface and a pair of silver hands, resting against it. Then there was the rumbling, and suddenly, sharply, his view turned.

And caught within it was a nightmare. A woman with white hair flowing long and untamed around burned shoulders, around a face that was a network of glowing red lines. Eyes a brilliant red burned from within sunken sockets and lightning of the same colour danced across her skin. The image was so hellish that it took a moment for Hackett to recognise the figure.

The video paused.

'My god.' He leant back against the railing behind him. 'That's Commander Shepard.'

EDI reappeared in a hiss of blue lines. 'Correct. As you know, Alice Shepard has red hair, and blue eyes. While the Cerberus implants that were installed after her death would give her some of her appearance, such as the cybernetic eyes, these scars healed well over a year ago, leaving behind no trace. As they did within moments of being placed within the medical bay.'

'Then – how?'

EDI seemed to glance down for a second before looking up. 'We have scanned the Commander thoroughly and discovered something that we had not noticed before. Wrapped around her Cerberus implants are other implants, in all likelihood installed at the same time.' EDI paused again. 'We have confirmed that these implants are of Reaper origin.'

The sinking feeling in Hackett's stomach opened into a bottomless bit of dread.

* * *

><p><em>Instinct made her turn, hands reaching for non-existent weapons. And behind her, a smile splitting his face, was Anderson – not as she'd last seen him, bloody and wounded, but Anderson as she'd first met him, wise and strong and just, without the years of responsibility as a Councillor weighing him down, nor the deaths on Earth. Just an old soldier – a commanding officer, but one who at heart was still a marine. <em>Come on_, he said. _You're going to be late.

_She looked back. The boy was gone. And the forest had – changed. The mist was still there, but the darkened ground was now green and mossy. Overhead leaves made a roof through which peeked mild sunlight. The whispers too had faded, leaving behind only silence, but it wasn't the silence of space, or the silence of thought when angry. It was a softer silence, the silence between people who know each other too well to have to talk, the silence in which one might enjoy a meal, or a good book. _

'_I don't understand – ' she started to say, but Anderson was already leading her away, down a long corridor of trees. Then she suddenly noticed the suit he was wearing, an old fashioned tuxedo and the – what the fuck? _

_Shepard, much to her consternation, was wearing a long white dress. _

_But she was following Anderson, deeper into the forest. They seemed to be walking for years, just them and the trees, and for mere seconds, for Shepard found herself in an open clearing, the moss here stretching into full-blown grass, tinged slightly blue in the light of the moon that shone down from overhead. _

_And there at other side of the clearing was perfection. _

* * *

><p>Liara had found it easy to find the field hospital for the Hammer personnel – she had been forced into it after staggering into a combined patrol of STG and Krogan forces lead by Major Kirrahe. On the way she'd been given a goddess-blessed dose of medi-gel and a temporary cast for her arm.<p>

Then after she'd arrived she'd been declared not in a poor enough condition to require treatment, yet not in good enough shape to help, so she'd been shunted to one side, sitting in a corridor where her worries could hound her and she could do nothing to distract herself.

The word on what had happened had been...confusing. By all accounts the battle had been continuing as before when suddenly the Reapers began to retreat, using the Citadel as a Mass Relay, before it too disappeared. What ground forces remained were being dealt with easily enough, but Hammer had had the worst of the initial assault.

Kirrahe had assured her that none of her teammates had died – but his expression had told her enough to know that the words 'not yet' had been silently added to the end of his comment. When she'd first reached the hospital she'd frantically asked the geth unit examining her whether she could see her friends, but it had ignored her, telling her that it could not afford to devote processing to such a trivial task. At the time she'd been shocked at its abruptness, but after a few moments of sitting watching the wounded pass by she'd realised what the geth had meant.

Those with broken limbs, with gunshot wounds, were left to wait in the corridors as she did. There weren't enough bandages, or enough medigel, to treat even the more severe wounds – she'd seen a krogan with one arm missing and most of his body below the chest gone be told to lie still and wait while the doctors tried to find more necessary supplies. She'd seen a salarian with half his face melted away be simply handed a spraycan of syn-skin and told to wait. An asari twitching and helpless as the eezo in her nervous system burnt itself out while the medical staff tried to save the life of a turian with a caved in torso. At first she'd felt unpleasantly sick, but now she simply felt hollow.

'Hey blue.'

The words jolted her out of her thoughts, and she turned to face, to her surprise, a figure with hair drawn back into a ponytail, tattooed hands shaking.

'Jack?'

The woman chuckled. Her hands still shook. 'None other. Where's Shepard?'

Liara felt the vast mass of despair and terror and worry that she'd suppressed under the shock of the hospital come tearing back out again. 'I...I do not know.' She swallowed suddenly as wetness tinged the corners of her eyes. _I will not cry. I will not cry. I didn't cry when she died before – _but she had, she had. She almost wailed her misery to the heavens, and only didn't because she already knew that she looked like a fool in her ragged clothing and cast, slumped against a wall instead of doing something.

'Oh.' The shaking in Jack's hands increased for a moment. There was a pause where there were only the shouts of the doctors in the nearby rooms. 'Did you know the cheerleader's in there?' she said suddenly.

This came as such a – _non sequitur, Shepard would call it_ – to Liara that she simply said, 'What?'

'Miranda. The cheerleader. Stupid bitch got slammed into a wall real hard. Apparently...apparently she's never going to be able to walk again. Or, you know. Fuck. I mean...shit, I still don't like her, never will. But no-one deserves that, you know?' Jack suddenly stood up. 'Well I – I've got to go. Some of my – kids got hurt. In Hammer. So, I've got to check on them. They'll be fine. They'll be fine.' Then she walked away.

Liara sat there for a moment, staring at where she'd been. Then, shakily she stood. She had to pull herself together. Shepard would be fine – Shepard was strong, a survivor through and through. But the others, they might –

The doors burst open and a gurney was wheeled in bearing a familiar figure.

'We've got turian – puncture wound through abdomen, large metallic strut still imbedded in the wound, with burns to his torso and arms, explosive damage to one of his mandibles. Someone get me some turian blood if we've still got any – holy fuck, he's conscious. I need a sedative!'

Liara barely heard the doctor's words. Her eyes were focused on the blue ones that met hers as they flickered from face to face. Garrus gave a creaking breath as he was wheeled away, a parody of a greeting.

The sickness that she'd buried returned full force, and doubling over Liara threw up onto the ground in front of her, again and again. After she'd finished she found that she was crying, and wiping her tears away, she sat down, head buried in her hands.

_Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. A human said that once. Oh how right he was. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Oh Shepard, my Shepard, come back to me..._

* * *

><p>'How the hell did you not pick up on this before?'<p>

Hackett was beyond furious. At first there had been shock, but then anger, anger at having been played by the Reapers had swung into full force. The Alliance had made Shepard a goddamned icon, and now – now he was being told that she might have been a traitor all along.

'It is not that simple Admiral. From the structure of the implants, they appear to be a corral-like nanotechnology. It is likely that they were inside the Cerberus implants, but at some sort of trigger – not necessarily caused directly by the Reapers – they began to grow. They enhance the Commander's biotics because they interface directly with the element zero nodules Cerberus implanted, but her regenerative capacities also appear to have increased beyond their already phenomenal levels. The injuries Doctor Chakwas detailed to you are already mostly healed, with the exception of one of the compound fractures which required rebreaking on two occasions to ensure it set straight.' EDI's already clipped and formal tones had become positively refined over the past few minutes.

'But she's indoctrinated.'

'I never said that. Commander Shepard currently shows no signs of the brain waves associated with those who are indoctrinated – we checked for them almost as soon as we realised what the additional implants were. The worst case scenario is that these implants grant some degree of control over her motor functions, though not her mind. The more likely one is that they are simply a coincidence, an accident that allowed her to save her life, though at the cost of the colour of her hair. This bleaching effect, incidentally, has also reversed for the most part, leaving little sign –'

'Please, just get on with it.'

'As you wish.' EDI paused. 'While I would advise further observation, Commander Shepard is not indoctrinated. However, given her last transmission and the current state of the Reaper War, I would debrief her as soon as possible, before giving her a period of rest to allow us to study these implants and to prevent her from developing further battle-related mental disorders.'

Hackett sighed. His mind was still full of doubt, but science didn't lie – apart from about the Crucible of course. Shepard was still their Shepard, the brightest star of the N7 Soldiers, then of the Vanguards. The one who united the galaxy, and third-in-command of what was left of the Systems Alliance. 'Ok. Notify me when Commander Shepard wakes EDI.'

EDI's face flickered. 'Admiral Hackett. She just did.'

* * *

><p><em>Liara was wearing a human suit similar to Anderson's, and never before had Shepard imagined her in it, but now it was all she could think of. Something about the image of it made her leaping heart leap more, her breathing become deeper. She noticed that the suit was blue, darker and softer than her skin, and a smile began to spread across her face as she moved closer and closer across the clearing, straining every nerve to just break free of Anderson and run towards her. <em>

_Then Anderson veered right, suddenly, sharply, dragging Shepard along with him. And in front of him was a horribly familiar sight – a red tinted squat box of metal. _You know what you must choose Shepard.

_She shook herself free. 'No! There's got to be another way.' _

Yes Shepard!_ She turned, and found herself facing the Illusive Man, hair wild and suit in disarray. _She finally understands. Control is the answer. Control is the key.

'_No – I have to – Liara – ' She turned to try and see Liara, but all there were were the consoles and a pillar of blue light with a child in a white hooded top standing in front of it. _

She is not an option. You have to choose. Do you take control, do you merge, or do you destroy?_ The blossom in the trees was fading fast, withering and drying as the light from above dimmed. _

'_You know my choice!' she screamed. 'I choose her!' _

_For a moment everything was still. Everything seemed to hang in balance. _

'_I always have.' _

'_Then, my love, you have doomed us all.' Liara's smile was sad. _

_A fog-horn blast echoed over the tree-tops and she looked up to see a Reaper, huge and majestic and vast beyond all imagining – larger than Sovreign, larger than Harbinger – blue lightning crackling around it. One of its fingers extended towards her and with a scream of all the dead she had ever failed it lit up and – _

Commander Shepard's eyes shot open.


	3. 2: Torn Apart at the Seams of My Dreams

**Disclaimer: Own not I Mass Effect, or the line from a song this chapter is called after**

**AN: Thank you to everyone who has read this – I'm sorry it took me a while to update. I'm hoping to be a little more regular, maybe once a week if I'm lucky. I'm also on the lookout for anyone who'd like to be a beta – if you want to, message me or say so in a review. Thank you once again to all of you, especially those who reviewed, as feedback makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. **

**Chapter Two: Torn at the Seams of My Dreams**

Shepard was just finishing tying her hair back into a ponytail with a strip of loose plastic she'd found when EDI's voice sounded over the intercom. Soon after waking she'd leapt out of bed, ignoring the echoes of pain from her still healing wound, and thrown on her N7 hoodie instead of the uncomfortably flapping hospital robes she'd been wearing before. After checking briefly on Anderson, who seemed to be recovering though he was still unconscious and wired up to more medical machines than she'd seen since her resurrection, she'd hunted for something to tie back her hair with, along with a reason as to why the door to the medbay was locked. Her entire mind was focused, laying her actions down in front of her in a clear path – one, exit the medbay, two, get a shuttle down to Earth to check on Hammer, three, report in to Admiral Hackett and the council about the Catalyst.

'Commander Shepard, Admiral Hackett wishes to speak to you in the communications room.'

Shepard paused. 'EDI. That might be a problem.' Was it just her or was there a note of trepidation in the AI's voice?

'The door lock has been released, Shepard. It was merely a temporary security measure.'

_Security? _Shepard didn't really have time to think about it. 'Right. Inform Admiral Hackett I'll speak to him as soon as I can get a sit-rep on the fleet and can check on the survivors of Hammer.'

'He wishes to speak to you now, Commander.' EDI's voice was apologetic, but beneath it was a hard edge.

That made Shepard stop. 'How long have I been aboard the Normandy?'

'Approximately one hour and thirty-two minutes.'

_One HOUR? I was more seriously injured than I think I've ever been – on top of that I had overtaxed biotics – and I'm up and about in an hour? _Shepard knew that her regenerative rates even without assistance from her armour were nothing short of superhuman after her rebuilding by Cerberus, but this seemed too much.

She went through the medbay doors at a swift jog, startling a passing crewmember who stuttered out a greeting and snapped a salute that Shepard briefly returned. 'What's the status of the Reaper forces around Earth?'

EDI's voice was suddenly directly in her ear, being transmitted to the small standard issue military implant used for radio communications. 'Reaper ground forces are still present, but show few signs of leadership or resistance. The Reapers themselves have – departed.'

Shepard stopped dead again. 'They what?'

'We hoped you could shed some light on their actions. Shortly after your transmission requesting extraction, the Reapers used the Citadel Mass Relay to "bug out" of operations around Earth. The maxim that the majority of casualties are inflicted on a retreating army held true, and many Reapers including Harbinger were destroyed, though the majority escaped. Then the Citadel itself disappeared after huge energy build up. It is believed that it somehow transmitted itself through itself, in effect turning its Mass Relay into a drive core with huge potential. Two seconds before the Citadel's departure, you biotically charged into the cockpit of the Normandy with Admiral Anderson and collapsed.'

Suddenly the memories rushed back, the struggle to move, the final huge charge. 'How...how did I charge that far?'

'Admiral Hackett wishes to speak with you.' EDI's voice had become disturbingly flat.

The lift finally dinged and Shepard leapt into it. The lift's slow speed had been an annoyance previously but now it seemed sinister, hiding the information EDI had refused to share.

_Get a grip Shepard. _She schooled her face into a mask of calm, of command, and as the elevator reached the CIC she stepped out at a brisk walk.

And promptly almost ran into Traynor.

'Commander! I thought that you would still be – well, in the medbay.'

'Would be, but Admiral Hackett wants to talk to me. And I need to get a sitrep on Hammer and on the fleets ready for me once I'm out of the com-room; I want it all, losses, damage, how many ships are still prepared and ready to fight, the overall state of ground forces on Earth, along with any reports of Reaper activity in other systems. Then I need the Council on the horn and over here along with Wrex, the quarian admiralty board, and some sort of geth representative – not now but after I've got a shuttle down to Earth and then back up again with the ground crew. Got that?'

'Um – yes, but Shepard, I saw you being taken into the elevator down to medbay. No offense, but you don't just get up from the wounds you had without longer care. Are you sure you're alright?'

'I just did.' Shepard couldn't help but add a slight snarl to the words – despite what she'd said she had a pounding headache and the pain, while lessened, wasn't exactly minimal either. And she had so much to do – once again. For a moment she struggled to remember why she hadn't just taken one of the Catalyst's choices, chosen oblivion.

_Because we rage against the dying of the light. _As deftly as she could she sidestepped the communications officer and set off at a gentle trot to the com-room.

* * *

><p>He shook himself from sleep with difficulty, and as his breath fogged the air he realised that the heating coils must have failed. Life support would shut down soon after. His fingers, covered in a thin layer of frost began to crack across the keyboard in front of him, fast and true and precise. He'd delayed nuclear meltdown of the reactor they'd stapled on, but only for now. The drive core was leaking – but only into the sections filled with nonessential personnel. Scum. How had they dared to rebel against him, against his leadership.<p>

Only four remained that he could trust – smart enough to be good soldiers, good scientists, but not as smart as him course. Strong enough to defeat any opposition, but not strong enough to challenge him. He gave a little smile of pride at his accomplishments. Blinked the last of the ice from his eyes. And set to work.

Out the window, the huge shape grew closer, glowing blue in the blackness.

* * *

><p>Shepard waited as the quantum connection established itself and Hackett flickered into shape. She'd be damned if she actually knew how the quantum entanglement device actually worked beyond the basics of physics she'd learned – something about particles that had once been related to each other still being able to affect each other across huge distances simultaneously. She briefly wondered what they'd done with the particles linked to the Illusive Man's base of operations – probably destroyed them as much as they could.<p>

'Commander.' She snapped off a salute on instinct at the tone of his voice. It was a voice she herself often adopted, and had nicknamed "Concerned, yet still pissed off, Command voice".

'Admiral Hackett.'

She watched as the figure in front of her's shoulders slumped. 'Shepard, what happened up there?'

'Sir, I'm going to have to tell the Council and the other leaders all of this as well. I'd prefer not to have to repeat it, especially over a potentially unsecure communications line. Suffice to say it was – ' She paused as she searched for the right word to describe it. 'Messy. It was damn messy.'

'No kidding! Commander, the Crucible was our one hope at getting rid of the Reapers for good. We've driven them off for now – but who knows when they'll get back? I need to know what happened – you said the Crucible was a trap, that the Citadel was a Reaper, and then you appear on the Normandy with – ' He stopped suddenly, like someone who realises he's about to say something impolite in the middle of a formal function.

'With what, sir?'

Hackett exploded. 'With fucking Reaper tech inside you!'

For a moment Shepard was so shocked by hearing the unflappable Admiral Hackett shouting that she almost missed exactly what he'd said. Then it hit her like a hammer-blow. Her lungs suddenly seemed unable to suck in the air necessary for her. Her mind was full only of the image of Saren's body, flesh stripped from it, red and glowing.

Hackett sighed. 'Before you start to panic, EDI assures me from the scans that the implants are quite small, and in no way indoctrinate you or allow you to be controlled.' Through the haze that suddenly seemed to surround her brain suddenly connected the dots, EDI's reticence, the surge in her biotic power and –

Rage suddenly surged through her. _Cerberus. _

'Sir. I'm going to be having some serious words with Ms Lawson.' Her teeth were gritted together, the words pressed out like hard pebbles.

'EDI says that it's probably not her fault. The Reaper tech was imbedded in the Cerberus implants and virtually undetectable, but at a signal it could grow out of these implants and enhance or take control of them. Apparently whatever you did has fried their receivers – they won't be receiving signals from the Reapers, but we can't be sure. Until you are cleared by our scientists – all of them – you are forbidden from using your biotic abilities. Do you understand?'

She understood – it wasn't even that much of an inconvenience. She'd fought without biotics for most of her career, and while they were damned useful she could live without them easily enough. 'Yes sir.'

'Also I'm going to have to confine you to the Normandy until you've briefed me on what happened.'

'But sir –'

Hackett held up one hand, cutting her off. 'Shepard, I don't have time for this. I know you want to check on your ground crew, but you are technically a security risk. Do you understand? A security risk.'

'Sir, would you leave your own men down there?' She tried to restrain the tremble of rage, the little whispers at the back of her head about how everyone betrayed her in the end.

Hackett smiled. 'No I wouldn't. Which is why I'm allowing one shuttle full of medical personnel down to Earth to pick up your ground crew and then return. Of course, London is still a hot zone.'

'They'll need an armed escort then, to protect them.'

'Indeed they will. I think we understand each other, Commander. I'll see you soon. Hackett out.' His image flickered away.

Shepard virtually ran out of the room. 'EDI, tell Chakwas to assemble a group of medical personnel in the shuttle-bay, and tell Cortez to heat up the Kodiak.'

'It's already done Commander. I know that you do not normally wear a helmet but perhaps anonymity would be advisable at this time.'

'Thanks EDI.' Seeing Traynor heading towards her as she ran into the CIC, she grabbed the datapad from her, muttered a quick thanks and dived into the elevator once again.

* * *

><p>The others were starting to wake as well, but the ice still froze them near solid. He would have warmed them if he could, but the virus that still raged through the computer systems took control from him with ease. It was only through continual work that he managed to hold it off from the most crucial system of all the engines.<p>

Of course they were heavily damaged by the demolition charges that the rebels had set off. The fools, the primitive idiots. Had he not been a fair leader – fed them, clothed them, taught them? They could have learnt beside him, with him. But they couldn't restrain themselves. Couldn't control their instincts. And so they'd lost out on everything.

For a moment of brief sentimentality he raised his hand from the controls and stroked the piece of metal hung around his neck. It appeared just to be a fragment, curved and beautiful, but it had withstood every test he'd thrown at it, every attack, finally being broken apart into the fragments like the one he carried after a controlled nuclear detonation.

His lieutenant had shaken off the ice now and was heading towards the engineering controls. Good – maybe they could persuade the reactors to give more than what he could. He doubted it, but one could never tell.

The huge metal shape drew closer and closer. The vectors he'd pre-programmed into the computers when he'd assembled the ship were ready for transmission. But they weren't close enough. Not yet.

* * *

><p>Shepard suppressed a wince as the shuttle jolted again and her still aching leg had smacked into the seat. She was clad head to toe in the thick N7 Defender armour, but instead of the helmet that accompanied it she'd put on the more concealing N7 Rebreather Helmet. She normally forwent a helmet, hating the stuffiness and the compression into a small space. Sure, they were useful, but despite claims to the contrary they still restricted one's vision, and the protection offered wasn't so much greater that she didn't prefer to go without.<p>

Her greatest problems though were her thoughts. When she'd left the conversation with Hackett she'd pushed the Reaper implants to the back of her mind to focus on the task of getting to Earth to check on her men, the men she was responsible.

The men who had died, who had been hurt, because of her. Who would continue to die and be hurt because of her. Because of the choice she'd made.

_It wasn't a choice at all. It was the only way. I wasn't going to destroy galactic civilisation in order to save it. _

_But this was larger than you. Are you really so willing to sacrifice everything just for a more moments of desperation clinging onto life? _

She didn't really have an answer.

And on top of that there still were the images of Saren. _He thought he was doing the right thing, siding with the Reapers. What if this is the same? You've been implanted too – what if this is what they wanted? _

She could still feel her biotics at the edge of her mind, like the rest of her, like any other muscle, waiting to be used. Like they always had since her resurrection.

It was probably her helmet that was making her think about her first death – the sorrow at the destruction of the Normandy, the burning flickering, and then the panic, the clutching, the fiery rawness as she struggled to draw breath, as her lungs burned away, as the vacuum sucked the moisture and air out of her lungs, just as the fires of re-entry began to burn her skin even through her hardsuit. It definitely wasn't terror that there would be empty rooms on the Normandy, that her soldiers, her friends were hurt or dead. Those horrified words she'd heard over the radio before limping into the transport beam echoed through her head. She couldn't lose any of them – not even Javik, as racist and self-centred as he was. They were in a strange way in her head hers – she wasn't Shepard without Garrus covering her six, without Tali's brisk orders to her combat drone, without Liara by her side, brilliant and blue and radiating biotic power. Oh they all had more scars than when they'd started, from missiles and fathers and deaths, but they were still there, every step of the way.

Well, not quite every step, but sometimes it felt like it.

The shuttle settled down with a thud that jostled through her bones, and Shepard winced. She almost felt one of her ribs shift in her chest. As the door swung open Shepard moved forward to cover the medical crew, carefully avoiding eye contact with Dr Chakwas. She'd recognised Shepard almost as soon as she'd got into the shuttle, as had been obvious from the disapproving press of her lips, but had refrained from saying anything. Cortez had required a bit more persuasion not to blab – mainly a swift headshake as he'd started to greet her as Commander.

Through the door the ash and blackened buildings of London looked much the same as they had before she'd engaged in that desperate run. Except now the tents bursting from them were overflowing, hastily set up bed after bed of casualties lying groaning as doctors ran from one to another, trying to stabilise them as best as they could.

Surely these couldn't be the same proud soldiers she'd stood with not more than ninety minutes before? Surely these blackened and broken figures hadn't been the ones to run beside her? Shepard had seen much of war's horror, but it had never struck her so forcibly as it did then just what the Reapers were capable of. She found herself, half conscious of her movements, drifting towards them. A salarian gazed up her with burnt eyes as she began to walk between the rows of beds.

Urgency seemed to burst into being within her – she had to find her crew _now_. Her half stumbling motions became a purposeful stride that then became a sprint as she ran down the beds, waiting to see someone she knew, waiting for the terror and guilt lurking inside her to spring back once again.

'Shepard!'

She skidded to a halt, glanced round.

'Shepard! I recognize you under that helmet. Some fight, huh?' The voice rumbled from near her feet.

Looking down Shepard found herself staring into the ice blue eyes of Urdnot Grunt. A wide smile split his huge ash encrusted features at the sight of her. 'I've never seen the damn squiddy bastards run so fast. You must have showed them, huh battlemaster?'

Cautiously Shepard removed her helmet, stared down at Grunt. With sudden realisation she realised that his right arm ended at the elbow. Grunt followed her gaze. 'Ah yes. Can you believe I lost my arm twice? First time was honourable – one of those big Brutes sliced it off, but then I was able to reattach it. Then that Reaper fried it off! Not even a Krogan can regenerate from that, so I had to get rid of it. It was dead weight. But then some nosy Salarian spotted me beating some Husks to death with it and insisted I go to the field hospital. I'm still trying to persuade them to give me something with damned blades on it rather than the standard prosthetic. Bastards won't listen. Maybe they will to you though. You always did have a silver tongue.' Shepard couldn't help but stifle a grin.

'I can actually see you with a scissorhand. It'd probably suit you. How's – how's the rest of Aralakh?'

Grunt's smile grew wider. 'You should have been there. Fire to the left, fire to the right, fire in front, and on they went, like Battlemasters of old. I saw one Krogan with all his limbs gone threatening to bite the enemy to death if they got close enough to him. We lost some good soldiers – but we won. That's what matters Shepard.'

'Have we won? The Reapers have just retreated. They'll be back, Grunt.'

'Yeah, they turned tail and ran. I remember fighting Harbinger – all of his insistence that he was our salvation through destruction, and then he runs like a varren before a thresher maw. Before they were mortal, but unbelievably powerful. Now we've seen them run. Wrex once told me that the greatest battles are won and lost in your followers' minds.'

'Wrex is a smart Krogan.'

'Heh. That's like saying you're a good soldier – it's so obvious to say insults everyone involved.'

A question trembled on the edge of her mind and after a moment she pushed it out with an effort, her gut clenching in anticipation of the answer. 'Grunt – have you seen what happened to any of the others?'

'Well, I saw them carrying away Miranda. Apparently her spine was fractured – you humans really are fragile. Don't know about that other human – the whining one from Horizon, that is, but the alien who smells like a Collector looked crispy the last I saw of him. Jack's fine, the crazy bitch, but some of the pups under her command died. Haven't seen the quarian or turian, or your asari, but that other human – Vega – he lost an eye and a leg. Last I saw him he kept asking for a parrot and some pieces of eight, so he probably hit his head as well.'

The solid ball of tension in her gut sank down and tightened further. Somehow she managed to stammer out words of thanks to Grunt and excuse herself enough to set off again.

_Look what you have wrought Shepard. Your crew, your men, scattered and broken. How many more must die, how many more must grieve, how many more must you lose because of what you've done? _

_How many would have died if I hadn't made that choice? There's no telling what would have happened when the Mass Relays detonated – if it had been anything approaching the destruction of the Alpha Relay, billions if not trillions would have died. And even if they didn't, their destruction would doom every dextro race in a levo system. The entire quarian fleet, all the turian armies, they'd starve to death in a matter of months. Maybe when the dead outweigh those figures, I should feel guilty. _

_But that's not how guilt works. Guilt isn't logical, it isn't reasonable. It finds fault, it finds the one who's to blame, and it lets them know it. And without guilt, what are we but murderers and cons, constantly wrestling with each other in the mud for a minor advantage. No, guilt may hurt, and it can haunt us when we know that we have made the best choice of many terrible ones, but it is necessary. _And with this Shepard did what she'd learnt to do ever since Akuze – she took a deep breath, and pushed all of it: the guilt and worry and exhaustion and self-loathing into a deep corner of her mind and locked it away. She could return to it later when she could afford to.

* * *

><p>They were all slaving away now, all five of them, hammering furiously at the controls, diverting as much of everything as possible through the worn out systems to the essentials. Engine thrust had dropped noticeably, and with a sinking feeling he realised the standard fuel reserves had completely degraded. The virus was contained – for now – but this was more crucial by far than some amateurs attempts to destroy his beautiful systems.<p>

He gestured with his right hand, and in half a second the full blueprint of the ship's fuel systems was panning beneath his hands as he searched through valves to find a way to route any excess to the engines without passing it through the area which contained the breach. He had mechanized all the systems and tied them to the central controls when he'd begun to construct the ship – a much more efficient design, that allowed him in the event of a total rebellion of those following him to retain control over all systems, though with some difficulty.

Another hand gesture and one of the remaining four shot from the room, grabbing a wrench as it went. While the system was mechanized, some pipes were open that should remain closed.

Of course, there was also the issue of power – they'd lost most of it save what was necessary, so the lights were out, as were all but three of the consoles necessary to fly the ship. He'd dimmed life support to a minimum, and jettisoned most of the more useless items, such as the dining hall.

They were so close now he could almost feel the electric charge running across his skin, through his body. They could not fail.

* * *

><p>Upon entering the medical tent Shepard almost ran directly into Chakwas again, directing a stretcher on which lay a battered looking Kaidan Alenko. He was unconscious, burns and bruises decorating his features. His armour was just as battered, the thick purple ablative plate burned and cracked. Behind him on a second stretcher was Javik – Grunt's description had been alarmingly accurate. His chitin was burnt to a deep black and where it had cracked in the extreme heat the flesh beneath looked sickeningly like roast beef.<p>

'They're both in comas – Kaidan's as a result of his injuries and Javik's medically induced. And they're not even the worst of it. They weren't even sure we'd be able to move Garrus.'

Shepard's throat seemed to dry up in an instant. 'Will they live?'

'Those three are the worst. There's a chance Kaidan won't wake up again – and if he does he might have lost access to the majority of his Biotics. Javik, I'm not sure how much we'll be able to do for him. We just don't know enough about his physiology. And Garrus – he'll live. The question is whether he'll want to.'

The hole in her stomach was a ravening pit of darkness, her mouth a desert. 'The others?'

'Tali's fine – a minor suit breach though so we're going to keep a careful eye on her. Vega lost an eye and a leg but he's fine otherwise. And Liara's fine.' The rest of Chakwas's words seemed to fade away beside those three important ones, those three ones that mattered most. At their command a bubble of joy, of relief began to grow inside her chest.

And then she saw her, looking lost and blue and alone in the middle of the corridor. It never ceased to surprise Shepard how her body reacted to Liara. Her heart raced, her breath became short, and within seconds her normally comfortable armour seemed slick with sweat and horribly itchy. It was like being a teenager again, but without the excuse of being primarily controlled by your hormones to explain your behaviour. And she wouldn't have given it up for all the world.

The first steps she took towards her were hesitant, then as Liara saw her too, those brilliant blue eyes dilating, she burst into a run towards her.

They met in the centre of the corridor. For a brief blissful moment they were wrapped around each other, one body, one mind, one hurricane of relief and desire. Then the kiss they shared had to break apart, too soon, far too soon. They spoke together.

'I thought that – '

'I thought you – '

Whatever they meant to say was cut off as their passion won out and they kissed again, lips pushing against each other, a moment of respite.

They broke apart again, arms still wrapped around each other. Liara's eyes shimmered under the harsh fluorescence of the lights. 'Shepard – when I heard that the Citadel had vanished – '

'I wasn't on it.' She pressed a chain of kisses along Liara's eyebrow, along the fine scales that made up her skin. 'I got off just in time – ' Her words were cut off as Liara pulled her down again into another brilliant kiss.

When they broke apart again, they were both breathing heavily. They had tightened their embrace without realising it, and they both winced as their injuries made themselves known. Each caught the other's wince and backed away hastily.

'Shepard! I'm so sorry – '

'My fault, I should have seen your – ' Shepard gestured at Liara's arm wrapped in the sling. 'You broke your arm?'

Liara's expression folded into a frown. 'And what are the extent of your injuries?'

_She has me there..._Shepard was distracted from having to reply by the sudden opening of her communicator.

'Commander do you read me? This is Joker. The Council's here, along with everyone else you asked for. They're – ah, they're asking for you.'

* * *

><p>They were there. Just a few seconds more. Just a few moments more.<p>

The mass relay grew in their vision, as the ship limped closer and closer to it. He sent the coordinates out, hardly expecting a response. He held his breath.

Then like the finger of some angry god a long streamer of lightning reached out from the blue sun of the mass relay and connected with the ship. He felt it shake, could almost feel the pressure against the hull.

Then there was a flash, and suddenly there was the sensation of moving incredibly fast incredibly quickly, of sudden acceleration then deceleration. His fellows collapsed to the floor, but he remained seating, furiously pouring power from engines to shield generators, to gravity buffers.

The ship slowed, stalled. But it didn't matter. He'd done it.

His huge three parted mouth split in a wide grin, and if anyone had been able to tell what expression was dancing in his eight eyes they would have seen pure unbridled joy. His voice rumbled from a chest wrapped not only in thick natural plating and muscle but a thick layer of silver armour.

'I have done it.'

His fellows raised their heads from where they were lying on the floor. He decided to give in to his sense of drama, and span his chair around to face them.

'My friends, we are the first five yahg to travel to the stars. Let them tremble as we come.'


	4. 3: Beholden for All that You've Done

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect, that's Bioware. Also, as the image of this fic in my head is looking awfully like some of the Polity books by Neal Asher, I don't own them either. Nor do I own any songs I use as chapter titles. **

**AN: Sorry this took a day longer than I promised. Thank you for all your reviews, and favourites, and followings. Alas, grim news on the ME3 ending revision front from Bioware – then again, I'm not good at admitting I was wrong either. Also, humorous thing I realised a few days ago – third game in a series released recently ends with activation of a device that not only wipes out the bad guys but also removes the fuel/system of transport used by the majority of the populace. Seriously Bioware, there was no need to take GOW3's ending as well as its cover system. **

**EDIT: I've added an extra scene at the end – chapter didn't feel finished when I looked at it again...not sure if it's any better now. Please leave feedback, and enjoy! Also, am still looking for a beta...if you want the job, pm me or say so in your review!**

**Chapter Three: Beholden for All that You've Done**

She hadn't bothered to put her helmet back on for the flight up. Chakwas already knew it was her, and the medicals had probably already guessed. She needed to see her crew with her own eyes, to let them know she was there for them, supporting them. Even if they were almost all unconscious.

The end of the shuttle was crowded with gurneys. Kaidan's and Javik's were at the back, then there was Vega's – not looking at the empty space where his right leg was meant to be was hard – next to Tali's. She apparently was fine, with almost as few injuries as Liara, but she had a suit breach, and had also had to be sedated because she kept on crying out for Garrus.

He was the last of them lying there, looking surprisingly fragile for him. That was hardly surprising though. He was covered in medigel, but underneath it, things were bad. A large number of broken ribs. A shattered mandible. A whole number of cracked plates. Slashed thigh muscles on the left leg, the right broken in two different places. One arm was crushed, the other so badly shattered it would likely require replacement. A gaping hole in his stomach. Not to mention the third degree burns to just over seventy percent of his body.

Shepard couldn't bear to look at him for more than a few moments. A litany of blame wanted to pour itself through her every time she so much as caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye.

But then there was the comforting warmth of the body next to her, the weight of the head in her armoured lap as Liara slumbered, and Shepard's spirits were lifted. She felt cruel for feeling so happy when her best friend lay there dying, but that was what love was. It took everything else and made it shadows, made it nothing but scenery. Some days she hated love. Hated compassion. Hated not being able to apply the cold arithmetic of war to life.

But she knew that if she did, then she would have lost what she fought for. She fought for the compassion, for the love, for the brief elusive chance that peace was an option.

Gently she felt the shuttle set down in the Normandy's broad shuttle bay. The doors hissed open almost instantly, and the doctors began to move their silent burdens out. Shepard felt Liara stir beside her. She tried to resist the silly burst of adoration she felt as she saw one beautiful blue eye open slowly, cautiously.

Suddenly Liara seemed to realise where she was. She sat up, eyes shooting wide open. 'Goddess, I'm so sorry Shepard, I didn't mean to –'

'It's ok. We've got to go meet the Council now.' She paused. 'I need you to be – I need you to be the Broker for this meeting. Or his representative at least.'

Liara's eyebrows pulled together. 'Shepard...why?'

'Because I want what I say at this meeting to stay confidential. And who better to prevent information leaking than the best broker in the galaxy?' Liara was still frowning. 'It's – it's bad, Liara. It's really really bad.'

'I will go and change then. I don't think anyone would believe me to be an agent of the Shadow Broker in a somewhat ragged Alliance uniform.'

Shepard suddenly noticed just how ragged said uniform was, and desperately tried to squash the surge of lust that shot through her at –

'Shepard, I believe that the human saying "my eyes are up here" is appropriate.' A smile played across Liara's lips. She leant closer kissed Shepard, a short sweet kiss that both seemed to last forever and not long enough. 'I'll go and change now.'

Shepard managed to restrain the stupid impulse to suggest they change together – if they tried that, the Council would be waiting for hours – as Liara got out of the shuttle and walked away. She waited until there was a minimum safe distance – _it's not like Liara's an unexploded bomb, calm down Shepard _– and then strode for the armour locker in the cargo bay.

Normally on the Normandy, Shepard wore her N7 hoodie. It was comfortable, it showed who she was, and she liked it. But for serious stuff – interviews, diplomatic meetings, and calls down the quantum line – she donned her dress blues.

The first step was the shirt, which many an officer when first starting regarded as unnecessary, as the jacket completely covered it. But that was the point – whatever the jacket was made from, the inside rubbed people's skin up like nothing else in the galaxy. After she'd tried it once while in a hurry and spent the next week filching medigel from the medical bay for the huge red rashes along her arms she'd never made the same mistake again.

Next were the trousers, soft and loose and a brilliant deep blue. The shoes followed after, tight and slick black. Then the thrice accursed jacket, which always seemed far too small. She didn't know whose smart idea it was to have the shirt loose but the jacket tight. The result was small folds of shirt that dug into her skin every time she shifted in place.

Then she was ready, checking her hair to see if it was smart as the elevator doors slid open – there was no safer place to change than the elevator; it was so slow that you always had time, and since no-one used unless they absolutely had to it was unlikely anyone would walk in on you half dressed.

And as she stepped out of the elevator she ran almost directly into a huge red figure nearly twice her height. She restrained the instincts that wanted her to reach for her combat knife as the Geth Prime turned to face her.

'Shepard-Commander,' it boomed. 'I am pleased to make your acquaintance. The programs in this platform have been designated "Diplomat" by the consensus.' It extended a huge three fingered hand. She grasped it firmly.

'A pleasure to meet you, Diplomat. How are the geth holding up?'

Diplomat's head flaps wavered and Shepard squashed a thought of Legion doing the same thing. 'We lost many platforms during this battle, both in space and on the surface of the planet, but few programs. Several were corrupted by Old Machine code, but it is currently being purged.'

'That's good. Where's –'

'Shepard!'

She turned at the sound of that rumbling voice. 'Wrex!'

He laughed, a deep rumbling sound like a landside, swung an arm over her shoulder. 'I knew that if any human could get those mechanical monsters running it'd be you Shepard. I'd tell you that the krogan will sing of your accomplishments for centuries to come, but I already have.'

'It's not that simple Wrex.' The antechamber hissed open, and one by one they entered, ready to step through the scanner.

'Heh, when is it ever? But they're on the run now – we just have to hit them.' He slammed his hands together in a gesture Shepard recognised from Grunt.

'Could we survive that? We only won here because they retreated.'

'Shepard-Commander is likely correct. Losses inflicted before the Old Machine withdrawal suggest that any other engagement with ratios of less than sixty-six ships to every one Reaper would end in a loss for our forces.' Diplomat's eye flaps waggled again as the blue light from the scan swept over him. 'Given estimated Old Machine numbers, total fleet would need to increase in size by over five hundred percent to assure total victory.'

'Or we could simply improve the quality of our ships.' Admiral Daro'Xen's voice was icy sharp. Shepard, despite the fact the quarian admiral was a cast iron cold blooded bitch, could almost admire her technical expertise – she'd miniaturised the arc projector after all, and turned it into a mass produced sidearm. Of course, she was also about as unethical as a scientist could get in terms of her original designs on the geth before Shepard had ended the battle for Rannoch.

'That possibility is also viable, Creator Daro'Xen.'

The door to the meeting room slid open as Shepard approached.

Behind it stood Admiral Hackett. She snapped her heels together and saluted him on instinct. His face was disturbingly void of emotion – a controlled commander's face. Behind him Shepard could see Admiral Zaal'Koris and the three members of the Council gathered around the table. On the other side Liara, dressed in what Shepard tended to think of as her Shadow Broker white coat glared at Valern.

Hackett returned the salute. 'Commander. We're waiting for that debriefing you promised us.'

'Yes sir. Where's the temporary human councillor?'

'We did not think it necessary to have him here, given the presence of Admiral Hackett,' Valern said. 'For that matter, why are you? Hackett here told us that you contain Reaper implants!' Shepard shot a quick glare at the Admiral, who solidly ignored it. 'You could easily be a threat to us all – in fact I wouldn't be surprised if – '

'Quit babbling Valern, you embarrass us all.' Sparatus's low comment was somehow unsurprising, and Shepard briefly recalled the time when the turian had been the one to attack her and the salarian to defend. How things had changed.

'Is this true?' Zaal'Koris's words were sharp.

Shepard gritted her teeth. 'Allow me to start from the beginning. First, may I introduce to those of you who don't know her, Dr Liara T'Soni. She is here on behalf of the Shadow Broker.'

She could almost hear the gasp from the majority of the room, and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Sometimes the rulers of the galaxy seemed less like wily politicians and more like a group of idiotic children.

'Is that wise Shepard?'

'Yes. I want to make sure that what is said here, won't leave here.'

* * *

><p>Liara watched Shepard closely. She'd noticed from almost the minute that she'd first seen Shepard again – after the initial kissing, and passionate embracing – that something was weighing heavily on her. She hadn't pressed her – she knew she'd tell her when she was ready.<p>

Shepard sighed heavily. Then she walked to the table and leant forward over it. Finally, she began to speak.

'As you know, the goal of Operation Hammer was to get units to the transport beam to the Citadel. As you also know, it was attacked by Harbinger.' She took a breath of air. 'My last memory from the run is Harbinger's cannon hitting a group of soldiers near me, then an explosion then – then I fell unconscious. When I awoke, I had been heavily wounded, and most of my equipment was lost. However, I managed to find a pistol and make my way to the beam which then took me up to the Citadel.'

Shepard stopped again, and Liara saw her swallow. 'When I got up there, things were – strange. Anderson contacted me, said he'd made it up as well. I tried to meet up with him, and it was then that I found the Illusive Man.'

_The Illusive Man? What was he doing there? _It looked like everyone else was just as puzzled as she was – what would his purpose be in being there?

'He was obviously indoctrinated. He co – he managed to shoot Anderson, and immobilise both of us. But, much like Saren, he realised he was indoctrinated at the end, and he did what Saren did.' Shepard paused again.

'Go on, Commander.' Hackett's voice was tight with tension, and Liara resisted the urge to glare at him, him with his nonsense about Shepard and Reaper enhanced biotics. To be fair, he'd barely said more than those words before Valern had taken over, calling Shepard a dangerous threat. _As opposed to all those safe threats..._

'It was then that the Crucible aligned with the Citadel, and I received the transmission from you, sir. Here – well, here things get kind of crazy. Shortly after the transmission I saw –' Shepard stopped again. 'I saw a projection. From the Citadel.'

'Shepard-Commander, do you mean a holographic projection?' The Geth Prime's voice was almost confused.

'Yes. It claimed that it was the Citadel, the Catalyst.'

That got a reaction. Wrex tilted his head on one side, as if not quite believing what he was hearing. Valern frowned fiercely. Councillors Sparatus and Tevos seemed equally confused.

'I'm sorry Commander, but did you say that the Citadel itself appeared and spoke to you?'

'I think so.'

_No wonder Shepard was so upset! To be spoken to by somewhere where so many civilisations have lived, through which so many people have passed – no that wouldn't affect Alice like this. There must be more. _

'Then it told me that it was the creator of the Reapers.'

If Shepard's last statement had been an artillery shell, this was a nuclear bomb strike. Suddenly everyone seemed to be talking at once.

'That's ridiculous, the Citadel's been the centre of –'

'Goddamn Council bullshit finally explained, they were indoct –'

'I resent the implication we're so wea – '

'Everyone who's ever been there may be a threat; they must be quarant –'

'Error: Reaper actions seem illogic –'

'Would you all please be silent!'

Liara found everyone to be staring at her, and for a moment wondered why, before realising with shocked horror and embarrassment that she had been the last one to speak, the one to shout. Her cheeks flushed and heated. Somehow she found the sense to say 'Shepard, please continue.'

'It said that – that the Reapers were made to protect organics from synthetics. Yes, that logic is fucked all to hell. That war between organics and synthetics is inevitable – no, I don't agree with it Diplomat – and that in order to preserve all organic life, every fifty thousand years they harvest us and conserve our genetic legacy in Reaper form.'

There was a long silence after Shepard had finished.

_Goddess, this is what is bothering her! The discovery of the Reaper's true purpose, that in a sense they believed that they were helping us, saving us. That is what Harbinger said, "We are your salvation through destruction". But that can't be it either – she recovered in minutes from the revelation that the Protheans didn't build the Mass Relays or the Citadel. Shepard isn't upset by having the rug of preconceived ideas pulled out from under her; that's you. _

Finally Diplomat spoke.

'Error – there are logical fallacies within the Old Machine argument.'

'You said it flashlight head – that has to be one of the stupidest reasons for genocide I've ever heard.' Wrex's voice rumbled round the room.

'It seemed like this opinion had been programmed into it when it was created. But then –' Shepard paused again. 'It said that there was another set of options.' She bent forward, closed those brilliant eyes, and licked her lips.

Then, like someone trying to say it all at once to get it over with she spat out, 'I could have killed all the Reapers.'

_What? _

'What?' Valern's outrage was for once shared, by Admiral Hackett, Daro'Xen, Wrex – actually even Liara felt a tinge of shock at what Shepard had said. _She must have had a reason, she must have. _

'Why in the name of God didn't you, Commander?' Hackett's voice was sharp.

'Because if I had, every Mass Relay would have detonated. All of them. I take it you all remember the Alpha Relay?' Shepard's voice was icy. 'And even if the destruction hadn't been as extreme there were other disadvantages – the fact that every fleet in the galaxy would be stuck over Earth and unable to return home for decades, the fact that the same signal that would wipe out the Reapers would destroy all other synthetic life in the galaxy. And that was just one choice. The others were just as bad – take control of the Reapers and act as the Catalyst myself, or convert everyone into some sort of synthetic-organic cross. All of them involved the destruction of the Mass Relays before you say anything. Every one. And it stood there, and told me I had to choose to plunge the galaxy into the dark ages.'

Slowly, a grin began to spread across Shepard's face. 'So, I told it to go fuck itself.'

There was a long moment of silence.

'I told it that it could take its stupid choices and go home, because no-one could make that choice. I told it that we made our own fate and didn't ever accept one thrust upon us, especially by the enemy. I told it, sir, that we would fight to the last than give up what we were fighting for.'

'But...but Commander Shepard, how can we win?' Tevos's voice was grim. 'The Reapers have torn through our homeworlds, and while we have won this battle, they will return.'

'But not for a long time. The Reapers are back in dark space – it took them almost a year to reach us before, it will take that long again, maybe even more. We don't know how much damage we've inflicted on them, how many wounded they have.'

'The forces around Earth weren't all the Reapers. There are still hundreds scattered throughout the systems of the galaxy –'

'Exactly. They're scattered. If we take this unified fleet, this sword which we've forged and sharpened in this battle, we can strike each individual group of Reapers left in the galaxy, hitting them one by one with overwhelming firepower.' Shepard's smile was widening by the second. 'And the ground forces – well, Wrex, Diplomat, your people will be especially valuable there. And sir, I remember you mentioning several groups of N7 and similar rated operatives you used to secure sites I'd cleared. These operatives, from what I've heard, have the most experience in this fight. So they'll be the tip of the spear of the ground forces, the elite, leading each attack.'

'But what about when the rest of the Reapers return?'

'That's where we need you.' Shepard turned to Daro'Xen. 'I've heard the saying that the war is won in the lab – we need you to prove it. We need weapons capable of piercing and damaging a Reaper's shields on every ship possible, we need shields capable of taking hits from their weapons.'

'All this will cost money – where are you going to get it from? The galactic economy is in ruin.'

'And the war will boost it right back up again. There was a period in human history known as the Second World War. During it, our most industrially powerful nation, America, was attacked and lost their whole fleet – but with so many factories, the losses were replaced unbelievably quickly.' She smiled at Diplomat. 'We'll need the geth's help with making new shipyards for that, along with the turians. But it wasn't just the sheer number of factories that allowed them to do this, it was a huge PR campaign. Virtually every unemployed person in the whole country, and several already employed ones, were funnelled into the war – everything was, in the end, directed towards it. Even civilians helped. And that's where the asari can – you've been masters of politics and spin for thousands of years.'

Shepard began to pace. 'The Reapers thought we were divided. That we cared only for ourselves. But we don't. And that's our strength. We've worked together, but now we need not only to work beside each other but with each other. Salarian STG operatives being covered by krogan mercenaries. Geth engineers making quarian designed ships, then piloted by turians and humans. Asari warriors helped to the front by volus freighters, by elcor, by drell, by hanar. We've seen the start of this – the Reapers may have been retreating because of the Catalyst, but it was you, all of you, who thrust the blade home and destroyed so many before they could leave. Now, let's finish it.'

Wrex smiled broadly. 'That's the Shepard I know.'

And it was. Liara was having to resist the urge to reach over and drag Shepard onto the table and out of those too damn sexy dress blues. The frowns around the table had been turned somehow, all of them, to brilliant smiles. Even Valern looked uplifted.

_And that's your power my love – not the ability to kill foe after foe, but to lead, to unite, to bring people together who never would have thought they'd stand there. _

The rest of the meeting ran by in a haze of logistics, of the quarians throwing words at Diplomat like "positronic oscillation devices", "directed gravity weapon" and "antimatter dissimulators" that sounded more like they belonged in a bad science fiction holo-vid, of Councillor Tevos trying to persuade her to persuade the Shadow Broker (who was really her – her head hurt) to use his agents to spread whatever recruitment ideas she came up with, of Sparatus and Wrex talking battlefield tactics for so many different worlds and systems, and through it all, Shepard smiling like a madman and dashing from one to another.

Finally they all seemed to depart, buoyed and uplifted. Hackett was the last to depart, a wide smile on his scarred face.

Then it was just her and Shepard, Shepard leaning against the table, half panting with exhaustion, eyes closed.

'Tell me I did the right thing Liara.' Shepard's voice broke the silence. Throughout the meeting, even when she'd paused, stopped, she'd sounded strong, been strong. Now, there was something else in her voice, an edge of vulnerability. 'Tell me I've done the right thing.'

'Shepard...'

'Tell me that by dooming billions to their deaths I've done the right thing. Tell me, that by letting so many planets continue to burn, I've done the right thing. Tell me that I didn't do this because I was too selfish to let myself die, tell me I've done the right thing.' Her voice was becoming harsher and harsher, louder and louder. 'Tell me that by letting my crew die, I've done the right thing. Tell me that by giving the galaxy false hope I've done the right thing. Tell me I've done the right thing by wiping out all chance we've had of winning this cycle. Tell me I've done the right thing, Liara, by leaving Thessia to burn, by leading your people to their deaths.'

Words of reassurance, of peace _Shepard, that is not how it will be_ rose up in her throat. But then they seemed to catch, to stick. She stood, stock still, trying to say anything at all, to let a single word escape her throat. But Liara just stood there, unable to say anything.

Shepard's voice died away to a whisper. 'Tell me I've done the right thing. Please.'

Liara tried to speak with her eyes, to reach out for Shepard, to hold her. But she couldn't. Her body seemed to refuse to obey her.

A great breath seemed to escape Shepard's body. 'That's...that's what I thought.' She stood, flicked one hand under her eyes. 'I'm going to go and check on the medbay.' And she staggered from the room, and still Liara stood there, and she said nothing, and she did nothing, until Shepard had left, when this paralysis suddenly seemed to leave her, and slumping onto the table, she let her tears fall.

_What is wrong with me? Why could I not comfort her? _

_Because_, said a voice deep within her,_ because you know she is right. We cannot win this war as we are – the Protheans were more advanced, and they fell. And so too shall we. Darkness is coming, and she knows it. And you do too. _

* * *

><p>She could hardly be surprised. If she felt that way, why wouldn't Liara? If she felt unendurably, horribly guilty, why wouldn't other people think that she was? But somehow it was surprising, somehow it did hurt horribly. So she had gone to survive the closest part of her crime – her loyal, injured crewmates.<p>

Strangely the medical bay was empty save for the occupants of the beds. She was glad for this, glad that she could be alone with her thoughts, alone with her guilt, without all the million voices screaming contradictions in her head. Sometimes she felt she thought so much that her head would simply burst, pop open like a sniper round had struck it. Other times she wished she could pop open her head herself. Remove the horrible pressure within.

But she couldn't. _That's my problem – overthinking everything. I could have just made a snap choice – which console is the prettiest, or something similar – and the results probably would have been better than this. _

_But this all happened anyway! Your choice didn't affect your squad on the ground – it's only affecting the future! And how are their injuries your fault anyway – did you put a thanix cannon to Harbinger's squiddy head and tell him to fire on Hammer? No, you didn't. _

_I could have kept them out of it though. And now, now they'll have to fight on. Now the ruthless calculus of warfare will have to swing into operation. I'll have to send men to their almost certain deaths because I couldn't just end it all. Would it be so bad, to fade away into the blackness? I am so very tired, so very tired. To die, to sleep..._

_No, I can't. Too many people count on me, too many people I care about. And while I may be doing a terrible job now, it's better than not doing it at all. _

_But is it? What – _

'Shepard.' The voice was a harsh croak.

She looked up, startled.

'Stop – brooding. You'll start playing your bad – human music next. Not even the heavy stuff is much good. Not enough drums – any turian knows there should be at least three drummers in any band.' He gave a harsh sudden cough. 'Oh, that wasn't good.'

'Garrus?'

One of his mandibles flickered slightly. 'Do you see another ruggedly handsome turian in here?'

'Garrus!' She leapt to her feet and almost dashed across the med-bay to hug him before realising that was a bad idea. 'Should you be talking?'

He gave another hacking cough. 'Given by the feeling in my throat like a group of krogans having a dance party, I'd have to say no. But when have I ever done what I should?'

'Goddamn it Garrus!'

He smiled. 'Got you out of your mood though, didn't it?' With a start, Shepard realised she was smiling too.

His face suddenly became more serious. 'How's Tali?'

'She's ok – a suit breach, but I don't think it's serious. A broken arm too.'

'Well, that's good. Meant that me shoving her aside when Harbinger shot at us worked. She'll be annoyed though. It's hard to use someone for their body when said body looks like the aftermath of a volcano.' Shepard's face began to fall.

'Of course, that simply puts me on the same level as you mere mortals. The Reapers had to limit my raging sex appeal somehow, otherwise I would have indoctrinated all of them.'

Shepard laughed, almost despite herself. 'You're taking your mortal injuries fairly...lightly.'

'Injury's a part of war, Shepard, just as much as the guns. At least it's not my face again. Also I have more painkillers in me than blood at the moment.' He smiled again. 'So what happened Shepard? Did the Crucible work?'

She looked away. 'No. It – it was a trap.'

'Oh. Then how come we aren't a slowly expanding debris field?'

'Because the Reapers retreated.'

'And they did this because they what, realised they'd left their packed lunches in another star system?'

'No, they – it's...it's really complicated Garrus, and you shouldn't be talking anyway.'

'I'll just listen then. Now, tell me.'

So it all spilled out – the Catalyst, the Citadel, the choice. The Reaper implants, the rest of the squad's injuries, the meeting with the Council. And through all of it, Garrus lay there, mandibles flickering, monitors beeping.

'So – let me get this straight. You're unhappy, depressed, whatever, because the Reapers have retreated to dark space, and we've assembled a fleet capable of mopping up the ones left in the galaxy, and even more incredibly managed to get the Council to agree to it. Why?'

'Because we pinned all of our hopes on the Crucible, we put everything on it, and it didn't work. I should have done something, anything so that we weren't completely dependent on it.'

'Yes, we did. Yes, we were wrong. But you, you can fix it. We've got them on the back foot –'

'And they'll bounce back Garrus. You've seen how much firepower it takes to destroy them – how the hell are we going to win once they do get back from dark space? They'll roll in, and we'll be locked in the same attritional war we were before only with less resources and less men, and we'll lose.'

'Or we could win. Probability works both ways Shepard. How likely was it that we'd succeed on the mission to the Collector base? But we succeeded, without a single loss, with barely a scratch. I'm not saying that'll happen again. But we've got to have hope Shepard.'

'Because hope in the Crucible got us so far?'

'No, because without hope we haven't got a hope.'

'...that was possibly the corniest thing I've ever heard you say Garrus.'

'You obviously haven't heard the joke I made to Tali about calibrations.'

She chuckled. And with that chuckle came the realisation that Garrus had a point. That maybe what she'd told the Council wasn't the bullshit she'd thought it was when she said it. That maybe it really was the right thing.

'Garrus?'

'Yes Shepard?'

'Thanks.'

'It's my job to keep you sane.'

Then the moment was shattered by EDI's clear voice over the intercom.

'Shepard, an unidentified vessel has been detected near the Charon Relay.'

Instantly she was standing. 'Is it a Reaper?'

'...No, it isn't.'

'What is it then? What race does it belong to, what class of ship?'

'Unknown. I do not know, Shepard. It is...new.'

_Fuck_.


	5. 4: The Ship

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect, or songs, or anything much really. **

**AN: I'm not very happy with this as a chapter. It didn't flow at all, and felt all wrong no matter how many times I edited it. Ah well, if you spot any glaring issues, point them out so I can both fix them and feel validated as to my creeping dread. And on top of that, my posting is probably going to become even more irregular as I have both my AS examinations in the next month and my SAT subject tests (the joy of trying to apply to college in America AND England), and I have an Extended Project to write I was meant to have finished a week ago. Joy. **

**On a side note, I'm planning on a lot of technological innovation outside of the mass effect for the good guys in this – are there any weapons or similar that you guys would like to see being used against the Reapers? **

**Chapter Four: The Ship**

'What do we know?'

'It is very large, and distance scans appear to indicate it is heavily damaged. However the majority of its size can be accounted for by its engines. They are not mass effect powered in any form and appear to be ion pulse devices. This would make them capable of faster than light travel at full capacity, though the fuel inefficiency of such an engine would be nothing short of horrendous, and the speed would be snail-like.' EDI's voice was calm.

'Any clues as to origins?'

'None. The construction is similar to early human space vehicles, but the aesthetics appear – different. Also, little thought has been given to making the vehicle streamlined. It was not intended for atmospheric re-entry in any form.'

Shepard paused for a moment. 'What's the rest of the fleet's response to it?'

'Alliance ships are moving into standard planetary defence formations, with turian and asari ships in support. The geth are sending out scouting fighters to investigate. Ship coms show that there is a certain level of widespread panic.'

'No, an unknown ship appears out of nowhere and people are panicked?' Joker's voice was as cutting as ever, but underneath it was a twinge of fear. 'The last time that happened it was Sovereign.'

'Can you get Hackett on the horn?'

'Yes.' EDI's eyes flickered. 'Contacting now.'

Hackett's face flickered into view amidst the holograms. 'Shepard. Do you – '

'No sir, I don't know what it is. Any chance it's the Raloi?'

'Unlikely – we haven't heard from them since the war started, and we gave them mass effect technology. Of course, they did destroy most of their space-flight equipment, so it is possible that this is their return. '

'What are we planning to do with it?'

'Shoot to kill. Shepard, we can't risk it being a new threat, not now when we're just starting to win this war.'

'Sir, with all due respect, what if it's an ally?'

'Then why haven't they contacted us? They've had ample opportunities since they arrived.'

'You've seen the scans, you know how damaged the ship is meant to be. What if their communications have been knocked out? Standard first contact protocol is to isolate and investigate first, not to massacre without provocation. What if this starts a war, sir? Do we really want this to turn into our Relay 314 Incident?'

Hackett sighed. 'I do see your point Shepard.' He looked back up and smiled, static pushing black spots into his features. 'I'm giving you two hours.'

'What?'

'Make contact with this ship. You'll have two hours to report back in – otherwise I'll assume hostiles and order a full assault. I'll contact the other fleets, make sure they know what's going on.'

'Sir, wouldn't a diplomat be better qualified for this mission?'

'No, Shepard, they wouldn't. Did a diplomat make the krogan and turians work together willingly? Or the quarians and the geth?'

'I thought I wasn't allowed into combat.'

'You're not allowed to use your biotics Shepard. That's different. You're the best chance we've got at gaining an ally if you're right. And if you aren't, you'll probably be able to fight your way out.'

Shepard sighed. 'Yes sir.'

'Good. Hackett out.' His image winked into nothing from the holo-screen.

'Commander, how come we always get all the fun assignments? I mean, just once I'd like us to have the difficult task of guarding a supply line, or surveying some asteroids.'

'Price of fame, Joker. It's the price of fame.'

'Aye aye. ETA about thirty minutes.'

She spun from the bridge, ready to head down to the shuttle bay and begin arming herself, but came face to face with a very angry and familiar face.

'Dr Chakwas – '

'I can understand you leaping out of the medbay to determine the safety of your squadmates. I can understand you attending that conference by the war-room. What I can't understand is why, after you'd finished with all of these, you disturbed one of my patients and then failed to return to your hospital bed.'

'Well, the majority of my injuries seemed healed, so –'

'Seemed being the operative word, Commander. Shepard, I know that the remainder of your injuries are fine, but you still should have talked to me before agreeing to gallivant off to some completely unknown ship. Now, go and get some rest.'

'But – '

'But nothing. EDI, I'd like it if when Shepard got into the elevator it went straight up to the loft and then was inaccessible until we reached this ship. You've had about two hours of sleep over the last forty-eight hours, and while half an hour won't be much, it should be good enough.'

Defeated Shepard stalked past Chakwas and to the elevator. She didn't need to sleep, she needed to prepare for this damned space-ship and talk to Liara, and check on her squad, and try and think of what weapons and armour to use given that she wasn't going to be able to use her biotics at all. Could she even remove her amp? When she'd first confronted Miranda about her newfound powers, Miranda had said that Cerberus had simply stuck eezo nodules onto her nervous system – obviously a dumbed down explanation. But she'd never needed to replace her amp, never felt it overheating. Her headaches caused by biotic overuse filled her whole brain, and weren't as localised to the back of her head as the ones Kaidan described. And she certainly didn't have a slot in the back of her head that she could easily access.

So willpower was the watchword of the day. She'd just have to restrain herself. A difficult task – she gotten very used to being able to zip around the battlefield knocking foes off their feet with shockwaves and nova blasts. Going back to using cover and aiming sensibly seemed almost cruel after the sheer range of options her biotics gave her.

'Fucking Reapers.' The words slipped from her lips involuntarily, bringing a flicker of a smile to her face.

The doors of the elevator slid open and she strode into her room. And paused.

They'd rushed so fast from the Cerberus headquarters to Earth that she hadn't had a chance to tidy her room since Liara had been there. The bedclothes were twisted, the air heavy with the smell of her of

_sweat, and blue skin so soft under her fingers, blue eyes turning black, flickers of blue sparking between them, feeling her touch and knowing that she was feeling what Liara was, her soft voice caressing her as – _

Shepard shook herself. She couldn't afford to reminisce now. Maybe once she'd fixed things with Liara...

_And once again your life becomes a checklist, Shepard. Fix relationship. Investigate spaceship. And so on and so on. Live it, that's what life's for. Go to sleep. Let it all fade for now. Let everything fade away. _

She suddenly noticed she was still wearing her dress blues. She hadn't changed after the disastrous-brilliant meeting, and then she'd been talking to Garrus, and then there'd been this ship..._get a grip Alice. _She stripped off the jacket, pulled off the shirt, the trousers. Then she slipped into the bed, burying her face into the pillow, closing her eyes so she couldn't see a thing, trying not to smell the scent of them. Suddenly her tiredness seemed to collapse onto her like a train, pushing her deeper and deeper towards sleep, and away from the swirl of thought that still ran through her brain. And then –

Then –

– _then she was in the woods again. And once again they were in flower, blooming, brilliant. The leaves brilliant and green overhead, the trunks mossy, the ground covered in leaf litter and small plants. _

_And there was Liara, in that tuxedo again. Smiling. Her brilliant eyes so blue. _

_But the smile was different, sharper, more sardonic. She leant against a shining sports car, silenced pistol in hand, looking for all the world like a spy from a bad movie. And the green of the woods was different too, shifting, blurring. Flickering, like an intangible wind was stirring the branches, shifting the pattern of the trees. A rushing roaring sound filled the air despite its quietness. It was on the edge of hearing, but it was on the edge of hearing all around her. Everywhere Shepard turned the roaring was still the same level as before. _

The name's T'Soni. Liara T'Soni. _She spun the pistol around one finger. _You're here for the wave?

_Shepard looked down and found that she was clad in a wetsuit, huge rubber flippers on her feet. 'I don't understand,' she said. 'What is this?' _

This is the wave. _Liara's smile grew into a grin. _The wave brings change. It remodels, it destroys, it remakes in its own image. That's what it's always done. Look on its works, ye mighty and despair.

'_What?' _

_The woods shifted around them. The light grew stranger, more blurred, as if the leaves in the trees had suddenly increased in number. The roaring grew louder, less the noise of something in the distance and rather something approaching. _

You have to choose Shepard. You can't run forever. _Anderson dashed from the trees, uniform ragged, followed by the Illusive Man and the Catalyst-child thing. _You can't trust the wave. Look what it's done to us! _He pointed to the gaping bleeding wounds he and those who followed after him sported. _

'_Not this again!' Shepard was angry. 'I rejected your choices, you can't just throw them back at me over and over again until I choose what you want me to. I'm not cookie dough any more, I'm all baked and ready.' _

The wave's already rubbing off on you. _The Illusive Man's voice was regretful. _Fear death by fire, Shepard. _He rose his cigarette to his mangled face. _

_For a moment the trees flickered, seeming to burst into flame. Then they returned to normal, shifting green to blue and back again. The roaring was huge now, filling everything. She had to shout to be heard above it. _

'_I've told you my choice, I choose her!' She pointed to Liara, but Liara was gone. _

_Kai Leng stood in her place, wide smirk on his face. 'Surprise.' _

_And then the wall of water smashed through the treetops, a solid mass of flickering green-blue coming down on her, and it just didn't end, and there was so much of it, too much of it, pouring into her, over her, around her, into her lungs, her lungs were burning, Jesus it never ends, the light so far and blurred above, arms kicking frantically struggling for breath that she could feel being sucked out of her, she was on fire, she was burning, and then that sound, like a foghorn, blasting out as something vast blotted out the sun and – _

Shepard woke to the buzz of her alarm.

She stared blankly for a moment at the pillow, then as consciousness returned and the remnants of the dream faded she leapt from the bed and for the armour locker. In under fifty seconds she was ready, fastening the final clamp that held her greaves in place.

She strode to the door of her room, helmet under one arm, and then realised the problem with her mission.

Of her seven squadmates, six still weren't cleared for combat. And while she liked EDI, for something unexpected like this she wanted the firm anchoring presences of Garrus and Liara beside her.

_Well that isn't going to happen – Garrus is barely conscious, and Liara – she probably doesn't hate me. I hope she doesn't anyway...stop it. Get a grip. _

With that, her shoulders relaxed, her back straightened, and as the doors to the CIC slid open, Commander Shepard stepped out. EDI stood nearby, arms hanging by her side, clad in the black bodysuit she wore for missions.

'So, how are we getting on board this thing?'

'I have detected several hull breeches above the engines. The shuttle will drop us a short distance from the first one, then we will space-walk over and into it. Hopefully this craft has some form of artificial gravity.'

'Can you even do a space-walk?'

'This body is fully equipped with a pair of integrated mag boots, such as those that are part of your armour. As long as the hull is metallic, we will both be safe.'

'Commander.' Traynor's voice drifted over from her console. 'I've picked up several radio signals coming from the ship. They're pretty garbled, and I can't tell what language they're in, but that means that there is something on board that thing.'

'So...not the Raloi?'

Traynor grinned. 'Raloi's one of the few languages I don't have on my translator, but I managed to find "Raloi for Dummies" on the extranet. I can't say for certain, but what I've heard doesn't sound like the Raloi. Their base language is mostly clicks and whistles – this sounds awfully like growling a lot of the time.'

'Thanks.' Shepard gestured for EDI to follow her into the lift. 'EDI, what loadout are you bringing?'

'I have decided that as we may be acting as diplomats it would be prudent to not bring a submachine gun – however, in case we do encounter hostiles, an M77 Paladin should suffice to stop them.' EDI paused for a moment. 'Shepard, I know that since this war has begun it is your habit to use your –'

'I get it EDI. I know I'm grounded on the biotics.'

'I was simply observing that it has been some time since you have engaged in combat without –'

'I know EDI.' Shepard couldn't quite cut out the edge of frustration in her voice. 'I was a Soldier long before I was classified as a Vanguard. I can fire off concussive rounds with the best of them. Just need to get used to it again.'

'Of course Shepard.' The elevator doors slid open to reveal the shuttle-bay. Shepard jogged to the weapons bench where she briefly wondered how many weapons to take. EDI was right – this was a diplomatic mission primarily, but she didn't like being caught with her pants down. Best to be safe. She grabbed her faithful Graal, a Revenant and after a moment of eyeing the Black Widow and wondering whether it was overkill she decided on a Paladin too.

And not a moment too soon – the shuttle was all warmed up, and Shepard ran across the bay to the doors, leaping in.

'Didn't expect to be taking you back into action so soon Commander.' Cortez's voice was warm.

'Life surprises and tears you. Let's go.'

And as the shuttle eased up and out the open bay doors of the Normandy, Shepard could have sworn she saw through the window the elevator doors open again and a blue and white figure dash out towards them, but then they were well away from the Normandy, against the black and white tapestry of space.

To the right of her vision, a black ball of shadow, sat Pluto. To her left was the ever impressive sight of the Charon Relay.

And directly in between them was the ship.

It was bulky alright – four huge white spheres dominated what Shepard assumed was its back half, vast grey funnels sprouting from them leaving them looking like mushrooms. Stuck almost haphazardly to the front was a grey brown spike of metal and what looked like rock, with huge chunks missing from it. This spire was bent by a huge gap in its middle. She could see even from here the burn marks that scorched the edges of that vast hole.

'We're not setting down there, are we?'

'Yes, Shepard, we are. It is the easiest entrance into the vessel.'

The vessel was growing larger and larger in the window – it was easily larger than the Crucible, maybe larger than the Geth Dreadnought. Even the spike which had seemed small in comparison to the huge engines now seemed vast – a monolith of iron and rock.

Shepard took a deep breath, closed her eyes and slid the helmet onto her head. She counted to ten, and engaged the air supply. Breathed deeply again. Then she opened her eyes again, looking through the small slit of glass of her helmet and out the window.

She'd started doing this because at first after her resurrection she'd had panic attacks while putting the helmet on – it reminded her far too much of those last grim moments over Alchera. After a while she'd stopped having the panic attacks, but the habit of donning the helmet in that way lingered on.

And then she saw something, out of the corner of her eye out the window.

It was a curved, sloping fragment of hull. Alongside all the sharp rocks and the thick straight metal slabs, a small piece of elegant curved hull was visible through a gap in the rocks.

_Something's very wrong here. _

* * *

><p>The shuttle hovered half a foot above the hull. Shepard got out first, floating down gently to the metal slab beneath her then engaging her mag-boots before she could bounce off. EDI followed. Slowly, they began to clump their way to the vast hole before them.<p>

Being in zero gravity did have its perks. When they reached the hole, rather than jumping down they simply disengaged their magboots and pulled themselves down through it towards the onrushing floor, turning and activating them again on landing.

The interior of the corridor was wide and dark, and offered no protection from the chill of space. Cautiously, Shepard drew her shotgun and readied the flashlight attached to it. The light illuminated more – thick metal walls suddenly shifting to rough rock and back again. The whole thing had a certain rough look to it, like it had been flung together hastily. There was no pattern to the times the corridor was rock, and which times it was metal.

But the most noticeable thing was the cloud of orange-red fragments that filled the corridor just ahead of them along with the fragments of some sort of silver and white suit.

'Holy shit...' Shepard's voice echoed in her helmet.

'It is unlikely vacuum exposure alone could have caused this much damage. Whatever attacked the ship also attacked the crew.'

'Not just attacked the ship. The only way this could still be here is if it had happened after they went through the relay – they must have been boarded.'

'The weapons the boarders had must have been powerful if they caused this damage...'

'Yeah.'

Slowly, EDI and Shepard thumped onwards, past exposed and broken piping, past vast grates that stretched into more narrow corridors, past more dead bodies – one so horribly burned it was hard to say what it had been before, and another where only the legs remained, the rest long gone.

And then suddenly the corridor changed again, without warning. Suddenly its walls curved for a brief time, windows visible in the thick metal that shone like silver. It looked familiar, horribly terribly familiar.

'Shepard...my scans indicate that this section of the ship was built by the asari – seventy years ago.'

'Whoever built this must have found a crashed asari ship and salvaged part of it to make this. Can you tell – '

And it was then that it struck.

Something huge and silver white pushed down from the ceiling, huge black hexagonal metal sheet on one arm, and a huge bladed weapon in the other, hurtling towards Shepard.

It hit her with a clang that reverberated through her suit, though the vacuum outside dulled it. She was slammed down into the floor, and bounced off, Graal slipping from her fingers – she'd disengaged her magboots otherwise she would have broken her ankles. Her shield bar flashed desperately – it had absorbed the majority of the impact, but it was gone now. The huge figure had rebounded off her as well, but that had just pushed it away from the streaks of fire from EDI's gun. It flipped in zero gravity with ease until its feet touched the ceiling again, then it bounded down at her. Its visor was golden, triangular, giving no clue as to its nature.

She pulled out the Revenant and instead of firing at the onrushing shape she fired to the side, the recoil propelling her away from the battle and into a ledge of rock she clung to, swinging her arm back down to track the figure, firing.

Somehow it interposed its shield between them, bullets glancing off the dark metal. In the darkness Shepard saw EDI's omnitool flare into life, and then a set of blue sparks seemed to glimmer along the thing's arm.

It didn't seem to care.

Hurling the bladed weapon at the AI, it snatched Shepard's shotgun out of midair, and fired it at her, recoil sending it smashing back into the floor.

The spikes punched through her regenerating shields and deep into her shoulder. Medi-gel swam to the site, but her fingers had already relaxed on the Revenant, letting it slip away. She reached for it, but a second group of spikes caught it and turned it into sparking scrap metal.

_I knew I should have brought the Widow. _

She scrambled along the wall, using her good arm to pull herself along. The figure now seemed to be trading fire with EDI, ignoring her – which suited her just fine.

Whipping out her pistol she fired a concussive round straight into the things back.

If they had been on a planet it barely would have stumbled – it had been years since Shepard used one and she'd never been too fond of them anyway, preferring to shoot her enemies directly. But in zero gravity the force and flash of light sent it tumbling up and away.

She fired at the figure as it spun, dazed, but she couldn't see whether her shots had hit. Certainly the thing didn't appear to mind if it had been shot because with a sudden burst of compressed air it had righted itself, slamming its shield onto its back and sped towards her, hands outstretched.

Again, zero gravity wasn't her friend. She was unable to dodge the vast shape as it slammed into her, pinning her to the wall. The hand around her throat drew her back again and slammed her into the wall again, and again.

Then she brought up her right arm, omni-blade flickering into existence, and sliced open the thing's stomach.

The white suit gave way with ease under the power of the nano-fabricated diamond blade and a spray of orange and red drifted from within the suit. The figure thrashed, floating away from Shepard as she closed in for the kill, pistol pressed against its visor.

She pulled the trigger, twice to be certain. The golden mirrored surface shattered, sparkling away as whatever was behind was obliterated.

For a moment there was just stillness and her heavy breathing.

Then there was a hiss as a huge bulkhead door suddenly slammed down between her and EDI, and air rushed into the corridor Shepard floated in. Then the first white figure leapt around the corner, followed by three others. They bounded towards her, bouncing off walls till they came to a stop before her. She pointed her pistol at them – they looked almost identical to whatever she had just killed.

One of them reached up to its helmet.

'Greetings and salutations,' it said. 'I congratulate you on the defeat of our leader.'

Then it removed its helmet. Beneath it lay an all too familiar sight.

_No way. _

'Welcome, alien, to our ship,' said the yahg.


	6. 5: Bad

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect, or the song **_**Bad**_** by U2. Listen to it as it's great. **

**AN: Thank you so much to my reviewers/favouriters/followers. I'm sorry this took so long – the next one might take a little while as well. **

**I've also found the one thing harder than writing Liara – writing Tali...**

**Chapter Five: Bad**

Shepard stared at the yahg. Its skin was a deep purplish black, traces of white rimming its eight blinking eyes. Its face looked...neutral. She too had to be cautious, above all. When Cerberus had rebuilt her they'd installed a number of combat-enhancing implants that sent various chemicals launching through her when she found herself in a fight. None were lethal, but they made her more aggressive, and for a while she'd struggled with this heightened desire for combat. She would agree with Jack and Garrus that throwing that Eclipse mercenary out of the window was hilarious, but it also was excessive. So she had to be careful, restrain herself while the adrenaline of the fight still surged through her veins.

She restrained her first impulse to say 'What?' and instead did her best to incline her head in zero gravity without sending herself flying.

'Greetings.' There. Nicely non-threatening, formal, but friendly.

The response however, wasn't as great. The yahg's face seemed to pinch inward in what Shepard would have guessed was a frown. She wasn't certain of course – while she'd had copious training in reading the facial expressions of the council races as part of Alliance Basic, and had picked up several lessons on other races expressions herself, due to everyone's lack of contact with the yahg, and their lack of knowledge of them, she wasn't sure how to read the beings in front of her's body language.

Its voice was soft. 'I apologise. I had believed you to be of the tribe who are known as the asari. While our studies indicate that all aliens have translation devices, we do not. I was unfortunately only able to learn asari, and not the dialect you are speaking.'

Shepard stared blankly at the vast white armoured figure for a second before staring at her omnitool. Sure enough it was telling her that the yahg before her was speaking the standard council dialect of asari. For a moment she wondered how it knew the language at all, before moving on to the more urgent question of how to make herself understood. While she knew some of the asari language, she didn't think 'Where is the evacuation point?' was what she wanted to say, or 'I love you' either. Hurriedly she scrolled through the translator's options on her omnitool, finally finding the one that would vocalise her speech in asari.

The omnitool flickered slightly as she initiated the program. She glanced briefly over at the yahg to see their reaction. The other three yahg, the ones still wearing their helmets had drawn back slightly, but the one who had spoken didn't appear surprised or alarmed at all. _Interesting_. 'I'm human. I don't mean to sound rude, but what are you doing here?'

The yahg's mouth split into a three part grin. 'Greetings, human. We have left our home seeking knowledge, for knowledge is power, and with knowledge we may unite the tribes upon our home. The records on the asari ship we accessed did not indicate knowledge of any tribe called 'human'. May we enquire about you?'

_Seeking knowledge...great. Definitely a diplomatic job, and I'm not up for that much longer_. The weariness that had been held at bay by the fight was creeping back into her bones. _Still got a job to do, Shepard. Keep it together, just a little longer. _

'What about your friend here?' She gestured with her pistol at the headless corpse still floating near her.

'Ah yes.' The yahg's voice was still soft. 'He was our leader. He must have been scouting through the ship for traces of the rebellion and when he came across you and your friend he must have – ah, forgive me, my vocabulary is not perfect. What is the verb for temporary madness caused by fear of the unknown?'

Shepard blinked. 'I'm not sure there is a single word for that, but I guess panic is close. What rebellion was this?'

The yahg inclined his head. 'We thank you for the gift of words you have given us. The rebellion was the rising of those who did not share our views. They broke all agreements, and rose against us. They sought to seize this vessel for themselves, use it against the tribes on our home. We prevented them from doing so.'

Shepard felt a chill run down her back. 'That why there are so many dead yahg floating around back there?'

The yahg appeared to frown again. 'Yes. That would be the primary cause.'

'Could you tell me more about this rebellion?'

'Not now. It was unimportant – we trusted certain figures with too much knowledge. May we enquire as to what you are named?'

'I'm Shepard. Commander Alice Shepard, System's Alliance Navy, Council Spectre. And you?'

'I? My name translates poorly into asari, Commander. It is –' and here the yahg gave a peculiar burbling howl. 'But as that means little to you, you may call me...Shade. Yes, that is the closest analogue to my name. Call me Shade.'

'Right.' The pause gaped before them like a huge pit. Shepard cleared her throat and continued. 'I'm going to have to call my superiors, and tell them that you're here.'

Shade frowned again. 'You are not the leader of the tribe?'

'Uh, no. That would probably be Admiral Hackett.'

'We would like to speak to this admiral then.'

'Could you – ah, could you let EDI in?'

'Your companion? Of course.' Shade pulled his helmet back onto his head, then withdrew a bulky looking machine from his back. It opened up and after a few moments the bulkhead door slid open, the air rushing from the corridor. EDI was standing directly behind the door, omnitool ablaze and Revenant raised to her shoulder.

'It's ok EDI, they're friends. Sort of.' Shepard hoped that her helmet communicator hadn't been too badly damaged by her friendly interactions with the wall, or this diplomatic encounter could very quickly turn into a bloodbath. They'd beaten one of them, but only barely, and her shoulder was still damaged. The flesh and medigel had sealed the spikes in, so at least she wasn't losing any more blood, but without an easy way to remove them she effectively only had one arm to spare.

The communicator worked, as EDI lowered the Revenant. 'Commander. It is pleasing to see you are still alive. I presume you've learnt these aliens' identities?'

'Yeah. They're the yahg. I need a tight beam communication to Admiral Hackett, preferably not in radio or anything they might pick up.'

'Facilities here would likely render that task impossible – I do not have the equipment with me. However, I could route a call from the Normandy through the shuttle to your omnitool. It wouldn't be perfectly secure –'

'Do it.'

Her omnitool flickered into life again, Admiral Hackett's worn face appearing over it within seconds. 'Shepard. What have you discovered.'

'You wouldn't believe me if I told you. That ship? It's yahg.'

'Yahg? Really? That is – disturbing.'

'I've established diplomatic contact with them having killed their leader.'

'What? Shepard –'

'He attacked us – according to one of the others he likely panicked. One of them is capable of speaking asari, which is how I've been able to communicate with them at all – I'm not sure how he can, but he can. He wants to meet you, sir. They claim to be seeking knowledge to 'unite the tribes of our home'.'

'Shepard, I don't know how you do it. I'll meet with him on the Normandy forty five minutes from now. Hackett out.'

Shepard gestured to Shade, and began to float towards him. His response was to close the door again with another few taps at the machine, sending air flooding through the corridor again.

'Yes Commander?'

'Admiral Hackett has agreed to meet with you. You can come aboard my ship to meet him if you want to.'

'We would be honoured to meet a tribe leader of such worth as the one who commands you must be. Please, lead us to your ship.'

* * *

><p><em>Why couldn't I say anything to her? <em>

That question had continued to haunt Liara as Shepard accepted another stupidly dangerous mission and they'd flown off towards it. She knew why Shepard hadn't come to speak with her – she'd heard Dr Chakwas shouting at Garrus even from within her room – but what frustrated her wasn't this, but instead her own apathy, sitting in her cabin not even thinking about it.

_You didn't want to, though. You wanted to avoid it, because you knew that Shepard was right to feel guilt. The Crucible was meant to solve things – and she wouldn't do it. Now she wonders whether she did it for the right reason, or because it was easier not to, or even because this war has defined her, and if it was over what would be left of her? And now you wonder too. _

Idly Liara considered what it said about her that when she chose to mentally berate herself it was not her mother's voice that echoed through her head but some strange combination of Garrus's thick dual-toned twang and Tali. She remembered all too well how they had confronted her after Shepard's return, and asked her what the hell was the matter with her. _Shepard hates the war. She hates it more than anything. She hates it – _

_Because of what it forces her to become. You know that. She doesn't hate the combat, or the thrill of the fight. She hates the choices she has to make, the reports of the dying. _

_Which will only increase because of what she chose to do. Therefore there must be some altruistic reason – to chose to continue the war would cause her great personal pain, so something must have offset that. That being the effects of her choice. _

_So why couldn't you damn well say that? _

She paused in her pacing. It was a bad habit she'd developed on dig sites while thinking – she would pace up and down those halls and try and see herself there, see the protheans there. Her mind flickered to Javik, badly burned and lying unconscious in the medical bay. He would have disagreed with Shepard's choice, she knew. She could almost hear him say it: 'The Reapers must be defeated, no matter the cost. This Catalyst told you the truth – organics and synthetics cannot live side by side in harmony. It is better to give up what you are fighting for than to lose the fight itself.'

_And he's wrong! It's not better. Without what we fight for, what reason do we have to win? He was wrong! _

She'd tried to speak to Shepard before she'd left for that ship, but she'd arrived in the Shuttle Bay too late, the Kodiak already streaking into the distance. She'd not known what to say – only that she'd been wrong not to say anything, anything at all. And surely things would be easier, words would come to her, when she stood in front of her. But the elevator had taken too long.

So instead she'd dived into analysing the ship. Its shape was strange, though hardly surprising given its incredibly low levels of element zero. It had only one power-core, and a sub-standard one at that. The rest of it was dominated by the vast ion-pulse engines – each one dwarfing the Normandy several times over. The reason for them was somewhat bizarre given the presence of element zero however – was element zero scarce on their homeworld, necessitating careful expenditure, only in emergencies? Was it being used for some other purpose, as they hadn't realised its full potential? Or was it just that with their level of technology it hadn't occurred to them – the ship's vast size and bizarre composition certainly wouldn't be encouraging to the use of the mass effect. Her analysis showed that the majority of the hull was rock, probably carved directly from an asteroid. In fact, the more she examined it the more she decided the ship had been built around the asteroid, pieces being carved away where necessary.

But that didn't eliminate the important question – where had it come from? Along with the other one – why now? Liara disliked coincidence, she found it the refuge of the weak minded. There would be a link to be found between this new species' sudden arrival and the Reapers' equally sudden withdrawal, of that she was certain. Were they indoctrinated? She couldn't see any signs of Reaper influence in the construction, but that meant nothing. The Collectors had used semi-organic technology, nothing like the heavily mechanised sleek forms of the Reapers. Perhaps there was a link there – the Collector vessel had looked like it was made of rock too. Studies of Prothean ships also showed that they too often used specially grown minerals to construct their hulls – she wished again that Javik was awake so that she could ask him whether this was common or not. She'd had so many questions, and then when he'd turned out to be a racist imperialist bastard she'd forgotten to ask many of them.

And what had caused the damage to it? Was Shepard in danger? Would Liara's last memory of her be her own stupid silence as she desperately tried to speak?

_No! Be rational, T'Soni. Any race that has just achieved space-flight will have substandard weapons – they won't be able to do much damage. And Shepard is a goddess on the battle-field, without any equal. And it will not come to that anyway. It will not. _

She rested her head against the cool metal curve of the wall and thumped it several times. She'd seen Shepard do it when she was annoyed, heard her claim that somehow it helped. It didn't. She now simply had a slightly aching head and was reminded of what a fool she was.

_Calm yourself. Drink some coffee, talk to Glyph about acquiring more weapons manufacturing capabilities and preventing the breakup of the corporations who funded the Crucible, and read a book. Shepard _will_ be fine. You _will _speak to her. _

She glanced over at the desk she'd left behind several minutes earlier to pace, and noticed that the cup of coffee was drained down to the dregs. She'd picked up the human drink while on Ilium, it being a wonderful way to keep oneself awake for hours on end with very few negative side effects, and had become hooked on it, despite its fiercely bitter taste. It was simply too useful for her not to drink. She'd tried various ways of improving the flavour – humans often added milk and sugar to it, which she'd tried, and Wrex had told her that it didn't taste half bad with ryncol, which she didn't try – but it was useless. Dressing it up with extras made it taste, to her anyway, dressed up with extras. So she waded through bitter cups of black coffee until she decided, somewhat to her surprise, that she did enjoy it.

She sighed, scooped up the cup, and walked to the door. The kitchens had a cafetierre similar to the one she'd used to make coffee back on Ilium, and it would suffice.

The door hissed open to reveal a nightmare.

Huge, towering over her, eight eyes black and staring, hands reaching for her –

_- red and black; it'd thrown a table at them, Shepard shielding her (ignoring the pangs of regret for the distance between them, necessary, necessary), she'd obviously angered it and now it was coming for them, and she was shooting at it, watching with sinking heart as the volley from the highly modified Locust barely scratched its shields, then ducking down as a vast roaring chatter showed that it had opened fire_ –

- her cup slipped from between her fingers, mouth opening wide to –

- _scream, surely Shepard wasn't _stupid_ enough to take on something as strong as a krogan in close combat, red shield flaring to life – back away Shepard, back away! – fear for her, fear for herself as it raked the room again, cover crumbling under the relentless assault of its fire, waiting waiting, Shepard falling, being hit, no no no no –_

- blue fire spinning around her fingers, around her arms, embracing her, strengthening her, she thrust out her arm, roaring with rage. Biotics slammed from her, a vast rippling singularity that caught the yahg in its grip, lifting it into the air. She could see more now, running towards her.

Fear racing through her veins, she raised her arms to defend herself.

* * *

><p><em>Fifteen minutes earlier<em>

'How intriguing.'

Shepard was beginning to be tired of Shade and his constant, politely worded, softly spoken interruptions. It had first began when the shuttle had arrived to pick them up – he'd commented on its shape, and had asked her how it worked, and why it was aerodynamic when it spent so much time in space. She'd answered as best as she was able. Then there had been his questioning when she'd removed her helmet – he'd thought EDI was human and that all humans were similar to her, with silvered skin. He'd then asked a probing series of questions about human genetics and bodily structures that she struggled to answer. Then had come the array of questions as the Normandy swam into view – how large was it, how did it travel, its position in the System's Alliance, how it worked. That was always what it boiled down to – how did this work. _Well, he certainly did come for knowledge. _'What is it?'

The yahg looked around the shuttle bay. 'I was referring to the use of shielding to have a shuttle bay open to space – it prevents any mechanical issues such as jamming doors, and it provides an aesthetically pleasing view. One must wonder, however, at the power drain.'

Truthfully, Shepard had asked EDI to call ahead and get Joker keep the bay doors open so she could present them with this view. Apparently Joker's response to the ship being made by the yahg had been, in EDI's words, 'not repeatable'. The other thing she'd called ahead for was being carried over by Traynor.

'Before we continue, may I present these omnitools. They should allow you to understand us when we speak our native language, and while our omnitools only translate what you're saying if you speak asari, once we can set up a translation program with your language we'll be able to understand you too. May I also present Ensign Samantha Traynor, who will help you put on and turn on your omnitools.'

'Can you extend your arms please?' said Traynor, a second later echoed by her omnitool speaking in asari. Shade obliged, and barked something to the others, who did the same. Traynor took one of the thin metal oblongs and pushed it against the thick silver white material of Shade's suit. It stuck into place, and Shepard watched as he appeared to grimace slightly as the omnitool connected to his nervous system.

Then he waved his hand and it sprung into brilliant holographic life around his arm. 'Ah yes, the seemingly solid holographic technology. We are familiar with this.' His fingers darted across it. 'Most intriguing.'

Shepard frowned. 'If you don't mind my asking, how is it you are familiar with it?'

Shade looked up. 'We found examples of it on the asari ship that we examined. It appeared useful, but we dismissed the practicality of replicating it ourselves. It provided a great deal of useful information however, such as the asari language and some knowledge of what is called the mass effect. May I ask a question?'

'Sure.'

'Why is it that you, Ensign, and the one called, ah, ee-dee, have various differences in appearance from some others? For example, you have fatty deposits upon your chest, but others do not. Is this sexual dimorphism or are they a different tribe?'

Shepard did her best to squash the surge of mortification and the blush that shot through her. It was to be expected of course – any first contact situation was full of social awkwardness when it wasn't full of bullets. EDI however was free of the coughing fit that Traynor had broken into, and so she was the one to respond.

'Humans do have two genders, male and female. Your guess of sexual dimorphism was very accurate.'

'There were enough similarities alongside the differences for it to be a rational option.' Traynor had recovered enough to give the next yahg an omnitool. It snarled slightly at the sting of the neural connection, but didn't respond otherwise.

'May I ask of your species, Shade?' continued EDI.

'Of course. We do not have sexual dimorphism as such – rather, for a period of time our gender reverses. If we do not – ah – carry a young being within ourselves, we revert. If we do, until the birth we remain in that state.'

'Similar to the parrot fish on Earth then.' Traynor appeared to have recovered enough from Shade's question to be able to rejoin the conversation.

'Earth?'

'Our home planet. We're heading towards it now.' Shepard tried to restrain the sadness from her voice at the thought of Earth. It wasn't her home – never would be – but it was the birthplace of humanity, of her parents. Their culture was wrapped around Earth in so many ways, and thinking of it as the ash-bound ruins that she'd last seen still ached.

The other yahg had started to remove their helmets after being given the omnitools, revealing the differences between them. One was short, squat and red, large ears flickering constantly. The second was a deep black-green, three of his eyes missing, tall and almost spindly. The last was a brilliant scarlet in hue, black eyes scanning constantly around the hanger as they talked.

'It will be good to see another tribe's home.' Shade's voice was as soft and mellifluous as ever.

One of the other yahg, the shorter one, gave a low rumbling bark, to which Shade turned and responded. Then he turned to Shepard again. 'My companion apologises, but wishes to know how long it will be until we meet Admiral.'

'Can't he speak asari?'

'No. I was the only one with the patience to sift through the files and learn. Our leader did too, but I was the most advanced in that regard.'

'Ok. Admiral Hackett should be here in about ten minutes, which gives us enough time for a brief tour of the ship.' And brief it would be – Shepard did still not know what the yahg's intentions were, other than a search for knowledge, and she'd be damned if that knowledge included classified Alliance secrets.

So she led them over to the elevator, still clad in full armour, EDI and Traynor and Shade and the three other yahg trotting after her, servicemen stopping their repairs to stare at them as they strode in. With four yahg, the elevator was a tight squeeze, and the two minutes it took to get to the engineering deck seemed like an eternity.

She decided that avoiding Allers would be for the best – the woman was something of a pain, and while she was good at rounding up support for the Alliance, Shepard didn't want to give her a scoop on the yahg, not while she still wasn't certain about their intentions herself. She was being friendly, giving them the benefit of the doubt because that was what she did. She had to present humanity's best face, but be prepared to show them its worst.

She hated diplomacy.

'This is the engineering deck – through here we have the drive core and several other crucial systems. There are some crew quarters to your left and right –'

'May we examine the drive core? I mean observe. I am fascinated by the efficiency of the mass effect reported in the ship of the tribe of the asari's logs – when we tested it we found it very ineffective.' Shade's expression seemed almost pleading.

'You can look at it, but I'm afraid that's all I'll be allowed to show you.'

'Such an act would be more than sufficient, Commander.'

She strode to the door, Shade behind her, but before she could reach it, it had opened, revealing a familiar purple and black and gold silhouette.

'Shepard – I got out of the medbay while you were –' Tali spotted the yahg and raised her omnitool.

'Tali! Stand down. They're on a diplomatic mission.'

'They're yahg! You know, like the thing that threw a table at Garrus.'

'Yes, but these are good yahg. Not like the Shadow Broker.'

Shade's voice interrupted them. 'You have encountered our kind before?'

_Shit. _'Once, it was a long story. He'd been, uh, taken by someone and had then killed them and taken over their ship.' _And information network, but that's more information than he needs. _

'Is this yahg still living?'

'No, you bosh'tet. He pissed off Shepard.' Tali lowered her arm. 'Garrus told me what happened on the Citadel. This was before Chakwas came in and sedated him again. He's a bosh'tet too for letting himself get hurt like that. Can I talk to you somewhere not in front of the huge scary aliens, Shepard?'

'EDI, Traynor, keep showing Shade and his entourage around the ship. I'll catch up to you.' She walked away, Tali at her shoulder. Hackett would be pissed if he ever found out, but Shade currently knew so little of human customs that she was probably safe. And crew always came first.

Javik's room was deserted, the ever present mist that covered the floor dispersed. She wondered what that could mean for a moment before Tali was suddenly sobbing and throwing her arms around her.

'Shepard, I thought he was dead – he dived into the path of Harbinger's attack so _I _wouldn't get hit! I don't know what to do, and now it turns out the Crucible was about as much use as – as nothing! I thought you were all dead, all of you, and now you're alive, and there are yahg and it's all too confusing!'

'It's ok. Well, it's not ok, it's not going to be ok, but Garrus will live. I'm going to live. You're going to live. Maybe not for long, what with this war still going on, but we're going to live.'

'That's heartening.' There was still the edge of tears in Tali's voice, but it had died away. 'What's happening with the yahg?'

'A ship showed up –'

'I know that bit.'

'Ok, well when EDI and I got over there, we found a lot of unidentified dead bodies, a yahg who attacked us, and four who didn't. It sounds like they took an asari ship which had crash landed and reverse engineered a lot of it to make their ship. Now they're out seeking knowledge to help them unite themselves.'

'Do we want that?'

'If we help them we get the brainpower of the salarians combined with the power of the krogan. It may be a deal with the devil, but we may need them.'

'I suppose so.'

They stood in silence for a long moment.

'I suppose I should catch up with the rest of the tour party.'

'Probably. Come talk to me later, Shepard. I'll probably be in the medbay, looking after –'

A sudden scream and rumbling thud echoed overhead. An all too familiar scream.

'Shepard what was –'

_Liara. _

She was already running.


	7. 6: Words of Sorrow

**Disclaimer: No, I don't own Mass Effect , nor BFMV. Nor do I own a life sized Jaws model made of diamonds, and the chances of me owning that are about the same as the chances of the other two. **

**AN: Ok, so I turned out to have a little more free time than I thought. This is a bit short, and if there are any issues with it I apologise, and please tell me so I can fix them ASAP. With that, please enjoy!**

**Chapter Six: Words of Sorrow**

Not many people thought that much about biotics. Oh, they realised the dangers of facing someone with them. But those dangers in their minds were limited to the standard mnemonics – throw, pull, lift, warp and so on. Maybe if their foe was asari they felt they might have to worry about reaves, shockwaves, or charges, but these were all set – proscribed patterns of attack. And even these had decreased in danger in recent years with the invention of kinetic barriers that could, for the most part, halt these attacks.

Biotics were, simply enough, the manipulation of mass effect fields, of gravity and mass itself. They could do everything that could be thought of, with enough control. And while the mnemonics were the proscribed patterns of attack, within each attack there was infinite variation.

Take the barrier. Simply enough it recreated the same effect as the shielding systems integral to most armour – slowing the kinetic energy of incoming attacks. Liara had found when she had begun training her biotics, both when she was a youngling and when she was on the hunt for Saren, that the barrier required concentration to maintain. It wasn't like in the action movies she'd seen, where the hero could happily raise a biotic barrier without breaking a sweat and then proceed to throw singularities around wherever he or she pleased. But, with enough practice, one could maintain the barrier at the edge of one's thoughts – like a language, after a while one simply did it without much conscious thought.

But when she wanted to do something she wasn't used to, she needed more concentration. When doing anything for the first time, one needed maximum concentration.

Like someone throwing aside their bed sheets, she shucked the barrier off her, still maintaining a tight hold on the gravity it controlled, slamming the field out around her in a wide arcing sphere that hurled back two of the yahg with sudden exhausting force.

_What were they doing here?_ She had no time to ponder that question further as it was then that the one she'd raised with her singularity swung itself through the air towards her, hands outstretched. She didn't have time to feel surprise at how nimbly it was manoeuvring itself through the area of zero gravity towards her before it cannoned into her, sending her flying back against the wall.

Without her barrier, the impact was hard, a sudden smack of pain along her back and healing arm. She responded on instinct, a rippling wave of force leaping from her hand and knocking the yahg head over heels. It gave a peculiar yipping bark as she did so, but she had no time for satisfaction as another was approaching, small and red and fast, some form of baton extending –

She had enough time to raise a warp barrier before the baton struck, the shifting gravity fields tearing parts off the weapon. It sparked futilely, and the yahg swung at her with its other arm, seeking to catch her and knock her to the ground. She ducked under the attack, fist glowing with biotic power, and slammed it into the thing's white clad stomach. It hurtled back as if flung from a mass relay. The table crumpled under its weight. She could see familiar figures near there, hear them shouting something, but she didn't care.

One of the other ones was drawing close, another baton in its grasp. She wrapped it in thick layers of gravity that constricted its movement, then as one of the others began to stand she increased its mass to levels that caused the floor to groan. It collapsed to the floor, futilely trying to lift itself up from the ground. Sweat trickled down her brow – biotics required huge amounts of energy, and she was tired and –

It was then that the heat and force of the explosion caught her in the side, sending her spinning head over heels into the bulkhead, slumping to the floor. The warp barrier she'd erected had absorbed the shrapnel of the missile, but the kinetic energy and heat had bled through and had sent her flying. Dazed, vision blurred, she looked up to see a red and white shape, snarling and roaring and running at her, huge weapon in its grasp.

She raised her hands and hit it with a wave of pure force and warp, enough to level a charging krogan, the energy leaving her body in a hurrying panting rush, its silvered armour splitting and revealing the carapace underneath as it stumbled backwards. Its response was to simply raise its other hand and fired another missile. She rolled aside, feeling the warmth of its impact against the wall. The yahg bellowed as it charged towards her again, raising its weapon.

_Of course!_ She wrapped the weapon in a mass effect field, spinning it out of the yahg's grasp, slamming it into the thing's back, or she would have if it hadn't sidestepped and grasped her by the throat, lifting her into the air and squeezing. Her control of the weapon was lost as her hands shot to the vast white claw gripping her. She couldn't breathe, couldn't see anything other than its grim red face as it lifted her into the air. A warp sputtered to life in her fingers, but died just as quickly as the thing increased its hold. Her legs kicked at the air frantically as the burning pressure in her chest grew.

Then the pressure was gone, she was taking a deep breath of beautiful stale recycled ship air and hitting the floor, the red yahg knocked aside by another, black-purple in colour. It roared something at the red one, and then it turned to her, and she shakily raised her arms again to –

'What is going on here?' It was a roar, a shout of pure fury.

It was Shepard, eyes ablaze, Paladin in one hand, the other with omniblade extended. Her face was not twisted in anger, but still, impossibly statue still, frozen like ice.

Liara could have said all sorts of things – like how terribly glad she was to see her beautiful guardian defender swooping in to save her, or how she was sorry she couldn't say anything earlier, or how much she loved her. What instead came tumbling out of her mouth was, 'Why are there yahg aboard the Normandy, Shepard?' It came out harsh, and frightened, and angry – and she was all of those things, yes, but she didn't want to be them now, with the yahg still towering over her, eyes flickering from Shepard to her and back again.

'We apologise,' said the black yahg. 'We were being led on the tour of the ship when the door opened and – ah – this one emerged. Upon seeing us she became somewhat agitated, and her combatitive response left us on edge, and on instinct we returned the attack. As I said, I deeply apologise.'

Liara stared blankly at the yahg. Not because it had spoken, nor because of what it had said. But because of the fact that it was speaking _her_ language. Oh, it was rough – the accent was appalling and she was fairly certain he'd made up one of the words because he couldn't remember the correct one. But it was her language. She felt almost childishly possessive of it – how dare this yahg speak asari? The fear was going now, being very quickly replaced by anger. Things were suddenly becoming clear – the yahg must have been the ones on board the ship – and this was some form of delegation. Why hadn't Shepard told her about the yahg?

She'd missed what Shepard had said in reply – it had been angry and fierce, but also resigned.

'We apologise.' The black yahg inclined its head, then in a smooth motion its arm shot out, and slammed into the red yahg's exposed stomach. It doubled over with a roaring wheeze, but the black yahg's foot was swinging around and down onto its back in a blur, pushing it onto the floor at her feet. 'If you wish you may take this one's life as recompense for hurting your mate.'

'How did you – ' Shepard's voice sounded alarmed and shocked, and the brief swell in Liara's fury that she would tell some filthy yahg about her dropped.

'Her facial expression when you arrived, along with the quickening of her heartbeat, was most indicative. Combined with your response, it was the only logical conclusion. I note that she is of the tribe asari – yet you are human. May I ask whether such cross tribe relations are regarded as normal within the wider galaxy?' The red yahg squirmed under the black yahg's foot, and snarled something. The black yahg's response was a swift kick to the back of his head and a low rumbling growl.

'I think I'll return to my office,' Liara found herself saying. To her dismay her voice was wobbling slightly. She stood, staggered slightly. Shepard was beside her, taking her elbow.

'Liara – '

'Maybe later Shepard, when we don't have guests.' It came out short and snappish and mean, and she both regretted it and wished she'd said more. Words bubbled and snapped inside her.

She walked into her office and let the door close behind her before she slumped into her chair, hand across her eyes.

* * *

><p>Shepard resisted the urge to smack herself in the face. <em>You knew she was terrified of yahg, and yet your own cowardice and unwillingness to face her led to you failing to even mention it. Brilliant work, Commander. <em>

Then EDI and Traynor were beside her and she found someone else to turn her rage against.

'Why didn't you intervene?'

'My judgement was that interposing ourselves between Liara and the yahg would not have stopped either of them. I attempted to draw attention to the fact that their quarrel was a misunderstanding – neither appeared to be listening.' EDI's voice was infuriatingly calm, and Shepard felt horribly irrational anger at her for not being able to sound upset.

'On the other hand that was a good demonstration of why not to mess with biotics,' Traynor said.

'Ah. Were those biotics?' Shade's calm was even more infuriating, especially as he was still standing on his companion.

'Yes. And to your earlier question: yes. And to your offer – no. But tell him that if he does anything like that again, diplomacy or no diplomacy, I will hold him down and shoot him over and over again until all that's left are bloody chunks. Are we clear?'

'We understand what you have said.' Shade growled something rough and raw at the red yahg under his feet. Then he stood aside, and slowly the yahg raised itself up. For a moment its eyes flickered to Shepard and she shifted under its glare. Then, with a huff, it looked away.

The intercom crackled suddenly. 'Uh, Commander? Admiral Hackett's coming aboard via the CIC airlock. I think he's going to meet your guests in the conference room.'

Shepard nodded. 'Tell him we'll be there in five Joker.' She strode towards the elevator again. By this point she didn't really care if EDI and Traynor and stupid Shade were following or not – she just wanted to get somewhere small where she could close her eyes, take deep breaths, and calm down. She never thought that she'd be grateful for the slow speed of elevators.

She certainly hadn't when she'd raced up here merely minutes before. She'd banged on the side of it furiously, willing it to rise faster. Images of the yahg having turned on her crew, of Liara broken and bloody had filled her mind and it had taken every ounce of her willpower not to attempt to cut through the roof of the elevator and climb up.

And what had happened? A misunderstanding. A phobia.

'Commander, may we ask what a Reaper is?'

'What?'

Shade's voice was calm. 'Upon the extranet there are several reports referring to the "Reaper War". We were wondering if you could tell us what this is.'

'You've gotten onto the extranet?' She tried to keep the alarm out of her voice.

'It is most intriguing – we must ask you about these "lolcats" also. Such a creature whose primary purpose is amusement is an intriguing notion.'

'The Reapers are a machine race we are at war with. They want to wipe out all organic life every fifty thousand years. We disagree with this as an idea.'

'Indeed.' Shade's expression was inscrutable. 'And the lolcats?'

'An extranet joke.'

The doors slid open to reveal the gloom of the CIC and the stares of several crewmen. Shepard did her best to ignore them as she led her merry entourage of yahg round to the right, through the doors and through the scanner. To her amusement the tall green one had to duck to enter.

And then they were in the conference room, and for the second time in only two hours Hackett turned to face her. 'Commander Shepard. I take it these are – '

Shade shoved Shepard aside and pressed himself to the floor. 'Admiral, leader of the tribe humans, I humble myself before you. According to our custom, those who kill the leader of a tribe assume control of it. Commander killed our leader, but not being a leader of a tribe in her own right I must ask your permission before she becomes our leader.'

Hackett looked up at Shepard. His expression clearly demanded an explanation.

'Sir I had no idea this was – '

'Commander killed our leader when he attacked her in a fit of – ah – panic. He fought bravely, but she fought better and now he is dead. We hold no grudge against her, and pledge our lives to her service, and our children's lives, and our children's children's lives. We pledge to her our bone, our blood, our muscle and our carapace. And if we should fail her, let her rip our face plates from us and break them into as many pieces as there are the stars.'

Silence echoed after this statement. Shepard realised her jaw was hanging open slightly and shut it with a click.

Finally Hackett broke the silence with a chuckle. 'Well it looks like you've done it again Shepard.'

Suddenly they were both laughing, laughing fit to burst, doubled over and breathless, Shade lying on the floor between them, the expression she recognised as a frown crossing his features.

'Do you accept?'

Hackett nodded, unable to stop laughing. 'Yes, yes I do. How do you do this Shepard?'

'Murphy hates me sir,' she managed between gales of laughter. 'Murphy really hates me.'

'We have not encountered this Murphy,' said Shade, standing up. 'And we are not sure how he affects our customs. I shall investigate this further. Commander, I shall be in the Shuttle Bay with my companions should you require me. Admiral, may your blade ever shine in your hand with the blood of your foes. I must apologise for the presumption of requesting that you speak with us for something so minor.' And with that he strode from the room, the other yahg following behind him.

For a moment Shepard and Hackett were still able to restrain their laughter. Then it burst out of them all over again, pushing back the tiredness and darkness in her mind. For a moment they weren't two leaders in the most disastrous war in history, they were just old friends, laughing at the absurdity of the universe.

Then Hackett cleared his throat. 'Shepard, I've got a mission for you.'

* * *

><p>He ignored the growls behind him as they walked to the elevator, entered and the doors closed. Then and only then did he extend the neural-shock device into his hand and press it against Bahranik's stupid yapping face.<p>

His howl would perhaps have been comical if it weren't so loud. Both Yassik and Tehruk ceased their squabbling as he plunged his fist into Bahranik's stomach.

'Perhaps you would care to explain your disobedience?' he hissed into his ear. 'Perhaps you would care to explain how you failed to understand 'non-lethal force'? Or perhaps you would like to tell me why I shouldn't simply rip off your pathetic face-plate right now?' He was impressed by how level his voice was, how soft.

'The alien killed – my brother –'

'Your brother was a fool – we had agreed to observe any aliens who arrived before engaging. Instead he took on a technologically superior foe and failed. He didn't even try and use his better weapons, leaping down with his ga'tharn'ikta ready like a hero in tales of old.'

'He was brave!' Bahranik's eyes held his, each one of them. 'He fought them with honour, with pride –'

'Like your tribe used to, and where did it get you? Both abandoned and left for dead, piled high with the corpses and set aflame. What was it I told you both when I saved you?'

Bahranik grunted, struggling against his hold.

'What was it, Bahranik?'

'You – you said that knowledge is power.'

'Exactly. And what is technology?'

'Knowledge.'

'You understand, then. I was beginning to fear you had forgotten with your behaviour. I was able to persuade her that your brother was our leader, and that our attack was little more than a mistake. I was even able to divert her from her enquiries about our knowledge – but this will only continue to work if you do not act like a fool. You are smart, Ranikhressen, but you must temper your intelligence. Forge it as we forged our ship.'

He stepped away and gestured to the elevator around them. 'You have seen their power. They have guns capable of firing for hours without losing ammunition, weapons able to level planets. They can even afford to heal those as close to death as we saw within their medical facilities. Their resources appear virtually limitless, and this is without mentioning their biotics or their ships.' He pulled Bahranik in closer.

'Now envisage us with all this. I may be Shade for now, and dance to an alien's tune, but I am still Pahryatanik Vokankhxcha. And when the time comes, when I have learnt all that I can from them and have all the power that I can, you can kill Commander and her mate.' He smiled. 'Do you understand me, Bahranik?'

'Yes.'

'Good. Now, let's see what we can learn about the code in which they program these omnitools.'

* * *

><p>'After our discussion earlier, I hunted through old Alliance research files to see if I could find anything. Eventually something caught my eye, a Project Morningstar somewhere on Elysium. At first I gave up on it – Elysium was overrun by the Reapers last we heard. At least, until about thirty minutes ago.'<p>

'You got a distress call?'

'The tail end of one. It seems like the communications array had been knocked out, and they'd been under siege. However, they appear to have repaired it, and called for assistance. Shepard, not even I know that much about this. When I tried to look into it further, I found it was classified beyond my security clearance. All I know is that Morningstar is big.'

'How big?'

'It was designed to re-equip the N7 operatives with far more effective weapons. I don't know the details, or how successful they were. Just that it exists.'

'I take it I'm being sent to investigate? Sir, my ground crew is – '

'Healing up. I know. You are being sent to investigate, but in addition representatives from the other races are being sent with you. Primarch Victus is happy to have Vakarian as the turian representative, and the quarians appear fine with Admiral Zorah. The geth are sending someone, some operative who's been doing special forces work for us they're calling Phalanx. The batarians are also sending an operative, someone named Ksano Nabree. He's good – I've seen his mission reports.'

'What classification are they?'

'Infiltrator and Sentinel respectively. Apparently they've worked with each other before. Wrex has decided to send Aralakh Company with you – they've got their own ship to get there, so you won't have to worry about having to accommodate ten angry krogan. A Major Kirrahe volunteered to be the Salarian member of your team – you know him?'

'He lead the STG team on Virmire. Damn good soldier, sir.'

'Good. And we're sending some other people too – that squad of biotic kids, and their leader Jack? They should be arriving sometime soon.'

'Sounds like we're putting together a real A-Team. Can we afford this?'

'Shepard, whatever Morningstar was doing may be big. At the moment the fleets are patching themselves up, patching Earth up. We might be ready for the start of the next big push in a week or so, but that would be pushing it. You yourself said we needed better technology – this is a brilliant chance not only for that but to strengthen ties between the galaxy's races.'

'Yes sir. We'll set a course for Elysium as soon as our passengers come aboard.' She snapped off a salute and strode for the door.

'And Commander?'

'Yes?'

'Good job.'


	8. 7: Lucifer's Rocking Chair

**Disclaimer: I don't own nothing! Apart from a lot of copies of books and video games and music, but I don't even own the rights to them, or in the case of the digital downloads, really own them!**

**AN: Phew, I'm finally back. Sorry this is a bit short – I might extend it later, but for now it felt fairly complete as a chapter. As you could probably tell from my previous ANs I've been nothing short of ridiculously busy, and now I'm just back to normal levels of busy, so expect regularish weekly updates. Thank you to all the people who favourited, alerted, or just read it during this long dry period. **

**Chapter 7: Lucifer's Rocking Chair**

Sometimes things moved too fast, even for her.

Shepard liked to think of herself as a woman of action. But this was nothing short of nuts. Her brain bulged at the seams, aching into her eyes at the knowledge of the last several hours. To think it had been so little time sent another wave of tiredness through her. But she could deal with lack of sleep, lack of rest – she was a soldier, after all. She tried to remember the last time she'd actually had a rest, a real sleep, not filled with cryptic bullshit dreams.

It had been a long time. Maybe too long, even, for her.

She risked a glance at the yahg in the corner. They had settled calmly down on a set of crates with the datapads Traynor had insisted on giving to them so they could transcribe their language. Setting up a translation program with an entirely new species that wasn't empathic hadn't actually happened in a while, and apparently she was eager for a challenge.

And a challenge they were – swearing loyalty to her and attacking her crewmates, and existing and being too damned smart. Already she'd seen Shade tinkering with his omnitool. How the hell had he gotten onto the extranet?

_Shepard's luck. _It had been an old family joke at first – something to do with how her parents got together. She didn't think about that much. Then she'd started using it after Akuze – just Shepard's luck to find out the bunker she's meant to clear has almost double the number of hostiles it was meant to contain, Shepard's luck that the pirates have military grade weaponry and some sort of grudge against her. After Saren, it almost became official military slang. She'd heard the Reapers described as a Shepard's luck situation.

But the thing was, the phrase didn't just refer to the bad setup. It was the unbelievable saves she was forced to pull. Giant mecha squid threatens the Citadel? Crash through hidden backdoor relay in a Mako and spacewalk up the Citadel Tower to stop it. Killed by Collectors? Resurrected by Cerberus. And so on. Or, at least that was how the grunts saw it.

The thing was that Shepard knew that one day her luck would run dry. It had run dry on Thessia, it had almost failed again with the Crucible. If anything, she felt a certain gladness at the yahg's existence – it proved that chance was on her side once again.

_Found dangerous yahg? Don't worry – they're bound to your service by an oath. _She gave a small smile.

But smiling lead to thoughts of Liara, and now wasn't the time. _Focus. Talking to Liara about my idiocy, later. Waiting for the reinforcements shuttle, now. _

The team being pulled together for this mission was good. She'd have preferred to have a little more say in it, but she knew almost everyone on it, apart from the geth and the batarian. But they were a volatile mix at best. She worked well with volatile groups. But she was tired.

_Shepard's luck_.

The first shuttle curved into the landing bay, a sleek insectoid design that marked it as geth made. The geth platform that hopped from it, a burnished white in colour with a thick green eye was the second clue. It carried, of all things, a canvas bag from which she saw poking – _is that a geth arm?_

But it was then that the second occupant of the shuttle stepped out, a squat dark batarian.

He was also wearing fluorescent pink armour.

Shepard wondered how she managed to collect so many eccentrics. She hadn't even tried with this one. Then she slipped her command face on, and strode towards the shuttle.

'Platform Phalanx and Ksano Nabree?'

The batarian's voice grated on the edge of her hearing. 'That's Lieutenant Sentinel Ksano Nabree to you, Commander.'

Shepard had used to have a problem with batarians. It had had something to do with them massacring her family. But, eventually, she realised that each race had its bad eggs, and the fact that those batarians had killed her family didn't mean that they all were bad. If she thought that, she'd be as racist as they were.

That didn't stop her from absolutely hating the sound of their voices. Virtually every other race with a slight dual tone – turians, drell, elcor – had lovely voices – well, maybe not the elcor. But the batarians sounded like someone grinding knives, or rubbing broken bones together. She realised, of course, that this was purely psychological – the batarians that had broken into her home on Mindoir and that she'd killed had looked different enough for her to not have any problem with seeing them. But their voices...

Some quirk of batarian DNA had given virtually every male batarian the same voice box. Oh, there were differences, but they were pretty minute. So every time Shepard heard a batarian speak, she found herself catapulted back to the end of her childhood.

Also, Nabree was deliberately feeling around with his biotics, which was pissing her off. She could feel his touch flowing across the area, and she longed to slam back with her own.

But that way led to Reaper tech.

So instead, she squashed her past and instead nodded. 'Noted. You have all the equipment you need with you?'

'Affirmative.' The geth's voice was a light baritone, somewhere between a tenor like Legion's and the booming rumble of the Primes. 'This unit is at maximum combat capacity, and as it only ever carries one weapon with it, it decided to bring a gift from the geth people. We had heard that Vega-Lieutenant and Vakarian-General had received damage to their limbs. Thus we brought these.' It carefully flipped back the top of the canvas bag to reveal a tangled muddle of synthetic limbs. 'We have brought surplus, should they be required.' It gestured behind it into the shuttle. 'We also have brought geth heavy weaponry for those who wish to wield them.'

'Thank you.' Shepard felt the tone was diplomatic enough, despite her sudden memories of Saren's geth arm. 'I feel sure Dr Chakwas will appreciate it.' _And he is trying to help. It's not his fault I have bad memories of someone with geth parts. A turian with geth parts...Garrus is going to __love__ this. _

The geth's eye flaps wobbled. 'We thank you. This unit will take these to the medical bay, if the Commander does not mind.' It strode past. 'Ksano, I will see you soon. Shepard-Commander – it has been honour to meet the teacher of Legion.'

Ksano grunted. It might have been friendly, but at that point Shepard was too busy trying to squash the image of one her crew as Saren to really analyse it. _This is going so well already. _

'If the Commander doesn't mind, I'm going to go and find my quarters.' Ksano gave a half salute, then he too strode away.

Shepard was left standing by a geth shuttle like an idiot.

_Marvellous. _

* * *

><p>'Hey EDI.' His fingers flicked across the haptic interface. The krogans weren't coming aboard (thank god, he didn't think he could deal with frickin Grunt <em>again<em>), but their ship (and wasn't that an oxymoron if he ever heard one, a krogan ship? Pfft.) had to follow the Normandy, and so he was sending careful vectors over to the tub of a ship that had pulled away from the rest of the fleet towards them.

Careful vectors that he was sure would be ignored. _I mean, the pilot's krogan, right? No offence to them, but their idea of a good ground attack strategy is to charge forward yelling really loudly. My vectors probably will be too weak, as they haven't personally defeated a Destroyer-class Reaper in single combat. _He grinned, as the image of a row of numbers swarming over a Reaper jumped into his head.

'Jeff, if this is another query about the yahg –' EDI's voice was tired – and he couldn't really blame her. First the Reapers, then the yahg – the world was going completely nuts. He hadn't helped much by pestering her since she'd got back from the yahg ship.

But he couldn't let it go. 'Just wanting to make sure I have a full grasp on the situation. So, you and Shepard went over to the yahg ship...'

'Yes.'

'And found lots of weird dead bodies...'

'Yes.'

'And then were attacked by a yahg...'

'Yes.'

'And then met some friendly yahg.'

'That appears accurate in the essentials.'

'Is no-one else seeing anything wrong with this picture?'

'Their actions are hard to explain within standard galactic cultural norms, Jeff, but they are _outside_ standard galactic cultural norms.'

'I just can't see the logic in sitting around while your boss gets turned into sashimi! Look – the guy Shepard fought was meant to be their leader – so why were they hanging around and not doing anything till he was dead? It just doesn't make much sense.'

'Possibly it took them time to reach the area, and in that time Shepard had already defeated him.'

He shook his head. This was partly in response to EDI's statement and also at the krogan ship's plotted trajectory – it _was_ ignoring his vectors. 'I have seen way more movies than you, and I'm telling you, their actions are suspicious. They're going to turn out to be Reapers in disguise or something.'

'Jeff, you can't use patterns in fiction as a model for life.'

He rolled his eyes. 'Yes I can.' The screen told him that the second shuttle was swinging in towards the shuttle bay. 'Watch me. When Jack arrives she'll greet Shepard in a manly way –'

'Given that both of the parties involved are female, I'm not sure –'

'Nuh-uh-uh! Don't go bringing logic into this. It's an action movie trope – the two old comrades meeting again on the eve of battle.' He deftly tried sending the vectors to the krogan ship again – it was a Sisyphean task, but someone had to do it.

His mind however was still full of images of the yahg, and their ship. It just seemed wrong to him – they'd abandoned it without a second thought, as if it didn't matter to them at all.

This was their first spaceship for crying out loud, their Apollo whatever! And they just didn't care about it at all. Sure it looked ugly, and probably handled about as well as a Mako with a Hammerhead's thrusters, but it was still _their ship_! Joker just didn't get it – you don't abandon your ship. Never. It was firmly engrained into his being, like _Don't let Shepard die_ and _Never say 'What could go wrong?' without sarcasm_.

'Hey EDI.'

'Jeff, I am inclined to throw something at you. Or find you a nice flight of stairs.'

'Shutting up.'

* * *

><p>Shepard would say one good thing about Jack at that moment – her punch was strong. Something to do with the fact that it was bursting with biotic energy when it slammed into her jaw.<p>

She was airborne for a few brilliant moments, then she hit a stack of crates in a flash of light and tumbled to the ground. She pulled herself up and worked her jaw from side to side before looking up at Jack.

'Mind telling me what that was for?'

Jack's shoulders slumped. 'I figure you noticed some of the kids aren't there anymore.'

_Ah. _

'And you felt I was partly responsible for their deaths?'

'Something like that.' Jack slumped onto another stack of crates, the red light of the underdeck playing across her face. 'Course, you aren't the only one. I'm to blame too. And the Reapers. But the Reapers all ran away, and it's hard to hit yourself in the head hard enough to really get the point across, so –'

'I was the closest person. I get it.' Shepard stood slowly. The punch had _hurt_, mainly because of the biotics. But it was more than that – her fast recovery kept on leading her to forget she was still wounded.

_More problems with the technology in me. _She wouldn't lie, the regeneration was useful – very useful – but it often led to feelings of invincibility that were somewhat misplaced. Her resurrection had made her reckless, not because being brought back from the dead somewhat reduced her fear of it, but because of all the other things it meant – the adrenaline module, the skin weaves, the artificial bones.

'Thanks for waiting until we were down here before you went for me.'

Jack smiled. 'No problem. Figured it'd fuck with what's left of the kids' morale if they saw me deck the great Commander Shepard.'

Shepard settled herself on another crate. She still ached, a deep numbing bone ache that normally only happened when she used her biotics –

_Oh shit, I did didn't I? _She hadn't meant to – instinct had taken over as she fell and she'd wrapped herself in a half-assed barrier. _That's what the light was – fuck. My biotics were overtaxed already, and that's without the issue of the Reaper tech. I'm going to give myself an aneurysm at this rate. _

She turned her head towards Jack. 'So who did you lose?'

'Wilder. Idiot tried rushing a banshee. Minoru died better – she was holding off a ravager from Prangley for a good ten minutes. Didn't really matter though. He died of blood loss about an hour ago. Yorkes burnt out her biotics, and her head – well, it wasn't pleasant. Shepard, I've seen a lot of fucked up shit, but the Reapers really take the cake. They don't kill you fast, you know? There's the husks, and the indoctrination, yeah, but their weapons – they're designed for pain. You stab a guy through the stomach and he'll die alright – he'll die in fucking agony.'

'They're not very pleasant, no.' That was an understatement – she'd seen reports on the design of the bullets Cannibals fired. They were made from some form of enhanced bone, designed to splinter in the wound, making it harder to heal, and that was without the phosphorous like compound they were drenched in.

'Yeah. Shepard, if you don't mind me asking, where the fuck are we going?'

'Huh?'

'This mission. Where are we going? I mean, I thought we'd be doing cleanup on Earth for a while longer – the Reapers ran away, maybe for good, right? So why is the cavalry riding off on a super secret mission?'

'Hackett didn't say anything?' This was hardly surprising to Shepard – Hackett had been christened "Cloak and Dagger" by pretty much every officer he'd ever briefed.

'Nah. Something about weapons and galactic ties, but it was in diplomatese, Shepard. Fucking summarise it already.'

'Ok. Before the war started, there was a lab on Elysium, developing improvements to the enhancements and weapon systems of N7. Then we lost contact with it, and we assumed it had been overrun by the Reapers. But we got a communication from them recently –'

'And so we're going to check it out? Aren't we a bit much to pick up some fancy shotgun? I mean, we've got Grunt's company, Major Kirrahe, me and my kids, the geth footsoldier with the highest number of confirmed kills in the whole war aside from you, Ksano, and you and the girlscout army. I mean, isn't this a bit paranoid?'

'It's more than that. It's that this operation represents the new ties in the galactic community against the Reapers, the united front we're going to have to present if we want to beat them –'

'They aren't beaten?' Jack stood, a frown spreading across her face. 'I thought that was the whole point of the Crucible doohickey? And this whole final battle thing? I thought them running away was us beating them?'

'No. That was a tactical withdrawal. I – pissed off their leader somewhat I think.'

'Harbinger?'

'No, the Catalyst.'

'The what now?'

'The Citadel basically. The Citadel is the lead Reaper.'

Jack raised an eyebrow and whistled. 'Well that explains where it went then.' The frown returned. 'Still doesn't explain a lot.'

'Some of this I can't tell you.'

'I figured, Shepard. Just – if this somehow bites us on the ass in some way, I'm blaming you.'

'Fair deal.'

Jack sat down again, and they sat in silence for a few moments before Shepard said, 'You know the batarian?'

'Ksano? Me and the kids did a mission or two with him. He's pretty badass. Almost as badass as you. Of course, he's a total fucking tool, but that's life.'

'He wears fluorescent pink armour.'

'Yeah, I asked about that. He, uh, accused me of being a racist human who couldn't see true beauty if it stared her in her pathetically few eyes.'

'That probably didn't go well.'

'I threw him out of the shuttle and we had to fish him out of the ocean we'd been flying over.'

They laughed together for a moment.

'You gonna miss this war when it finally ends, Shepard?'

'No.' She'd given it a lot of thought, and she believed she was speaking honestly when she said that. 'I'll miss fighting – but I won't miss this war.'

'Yeah. I see what you mean. Does it get any easier? Losing people?'

'No. And I don't really think it _should_ get any easier. This way, we fight on and on, so we don't. If we didn't care – would we really fight as hard?' Shepard stood. 'I've got to get going now, but if –'

'If I need anything I can crawl out of my hidey hole and get it, I know.'

'Actually I was going to say that if you see my hamster, could you get him for me? He's somewhere down here.'

Jack raised a hand, middle finger extended. 'Fuck you Shepard,' she said cheerfully.


	9. 8: Could We Burn, Darling?

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect, or the works of the mighty, marvellous, and absolutely brilliant FVK. Rock on, you crazy bastards, and thank you for two marvellous sets at Download. **

**AN: Sorry this is a bit late – but it's here, right? It's also a little short...but next chapter should be longer to make up for it. Thank you to all the reviewers and readers for your support, and please leave constructive criticism so I can improve anything that's wrong!**

**Chapter Eight: Could We Burn, Darling?**

He stared down at his arm. It felt right, that was certain. Air brushed lightly against its surface, the hospital rail clenched beneath its fingers. He flexed them. The same torsion and twist in the joints. The shoulder pad was bulky – but he was used to that. His armour hadn't been designed for maximum arm mobility, and if anything this was a little more flexible. But the look of it?

His arm looked twisted and knotted wood now, yet somehow ropy and spongy to the touch. He poked it experimentally. Definitely spongy. And while it was the familiar shade of grey-white that his skin was, the whorls across its surface were...disconcerting. Where were the plates just beneath the surface? The scar from his compound arm fracture when he was a kid? The burnt skin at the shoulder?

_And I can only feel the outside. I can't feel the interior of my arm at all. It's...wrong. _

'It may take several days to adjust.' The geth's voice was an even baritone.

Garrus looked up from his new arm at it. Him. Them. He wasn't even sure if the new geth were plural or not – was he talking to several hundred of them, or just one? Did it matter?

'Phalanx, right? Uh, how did –'

'The geth observed casualty reports for Operation Hammer. When this platform was slated for the mission, we decided to bring repair items for Commander Shepard's crew.'

So it was plural – or not. The geth had taken to referring to themselves in the plural even as single programs to honour their 'liberator', Legion. Moreover, there were according to Tali manifold issues with most quarian translation programs, part of the reason why several words remained completely untranslated. It was about 99% accurate, which was reasonable enough for Garrus, but that 1% contained a few personal pronouns. These were rarely used by quarians now, in part due to the issue with the translator, but the geth still used them a lot, often leading to several issues with understanding.

'Vakarian-General?'

Garrus looked up at the geth – Phalanx – again. He'd somehow found himself poking his arm again as he'd thought. Its green eye stared at him unwaveringly.

'Did you kill three mercenaries with a single shot?'

Garrus squashed brief surprise at the question. Liara knew about the incident – but she was the Shadow Broker, and a friend who knew all about his years on Omega. Though Legion _had _known, probably just by overhearing. Once he'd returned to the geth, he'd probably given them all a report on his time on the Normandy which had inadvertently contained the information that Garrus was Archangel, and from there links could be drawn. His suspicion quenched, he relaxed his tightened grip on the rail. 'Yeah – well, it's hard to count the –'

'The heart attack should count.' The geth's voice was firm. 'Medical reports of the incident indicate that the heart attack was caused by stress and shock, the most likely cause of which was your shot.' Its eye flaps wiggled. 'We have equalled such a shot, but not yet surpassed it.'

'That's, uh, good I guess.' He suppressed a wince as he tried to move his mandibles into a smile.

'Indeed. We were very glad when we were told we were assigned to this mission as it gave us a chance to observe the famous Vakarian-General from a closer perspective.'

_Great...first we had a geth who was a Shepard groupie, now we've got one for me. I used to tease Shepard about Legion – I regret that now. Damn you karma. _He poked his arm again. The sensation felt off too, now he thought about it, but that might just be because he'd been poking it for the past minute or so. 'That's good, I guess.'

It was then that the door of the med-bay opened to reveal a pink-armoured batarian.

Garrus had seen a lot of things. He'd seen a krogan heavy-metal concert, he'd seen an elcor brandishing a knife and cackling, he'd seen a volus claiming to be a deity. But this...? _Dr Chakwas probably gave me slightly too many pain pills. _

'I know this question is probably a little strange Phalanx, but did a batarian in fluorescent pink armour just walk in here?' He did his best to whisper in case the batarian was real. It wasn't that me minded being rude to batarians – they were, with one dead exception, scum, and his view on scum was that it should be destroyed. Oh, he wasn't happy that almost eighty percent of the galaxy's population of them had been massacred, but he wasn't crying himself to sleep at night either.

'Yes. This is Lieutenant Sentinel Ksano Nabree, a close comrade of mine. We have embarked on two hundred and sixty three missions together. Ksano, this is Vakarian General.'

The batarian looked over from the syringe it had just picked up. His eyes swept Garrus, derisively, challengingly. He held the gaze, looking firmly into the top two eyes. The batarian grinned, a sharp challenging smile filled with teeth. His skin was a thick brown colour, like mud, or trees.

'I know.' He stuck the syringe into a canister he pulled from his armour. Pulled back the plunger, letting thick black liquid gush into the body of the syringe. His eyes flicked to Garrus again, and his head tilted to the left. Garrus hunted through his brain – was a head tilt in that direction a sign of respect in Batarian culture? Or was it to one deemed inferior? He really should have listened to Sensat's rants about the Hegemony more.

'If you don't mind my asking, what are you doing?'

The batarian's eyes narrowed. 'Pain medication. I'm a biotic.'

_Ah. That explains it. _

The batarians didn't have many biotics – for any one of a number of reasons. They weren't as prone to developing the eezo nodules as humans, drell, or krogan, and due to tight controls on eezo use in Hegemony space there'd been less in utero exposures to lead to biotics. Especially given the side effects of being a biotic batarian.

The eezo nodules of a biotic were normally spread throughout the nervous system, not quite evenly, but close enough. But in batarians, clusters of the nodules sprouted along the optic nerves for the upper two eyes. This didn't in any way effect their biotics – in fact, if Hegemony reports on batarian biotics were to be believed, they were capable of very impressive feats.

But it did lead to blindness in the upper two eyes. _And given batarian culture...well, it's like saying that you're damned. You can't get to the afterlife, because your soul can't leave your body. Most biotic batarians are aborted before they're even born, the rest generally killed in childhood when their lack of sight becomes obvious. Damn. _

He still kept his gaze focused on the upper eyes. It was a sign of respect, he guessed, that it didn't matter to him. Shepard, if it wasn't for her hatred of batarians, might have done something similar in the circumstances, or so he hoped. 'That's good.'

Ksano's shoulders subtly relaxed. 'I see you've been talking to Phalanx. He's a damned good shot.' The sharp knife grin shot back. 'Almost as good as you, Archangel.'

Garrus suppressed another jump of surprise. 'How do you both know about that?'

'Geth do not withhold data from allies.' Phalanx's eye flaps wobbled. 'We understand that there are several who would wish you dead, but Nabree-Sentinel is not one of them.'

Garrus tried to grin again. 'If you're sure.' His face felt like it was on fire, but if there was one thing Shepard had taught him it was that building bridges was often more important than personal safety. He'd be working with these men, hopefully. He knew that they were professional enough to have his back even if they hated him, but if they liked him, respected him – well, then they'd give it that bit of extra effort.

Ksano slid the syringe into his throat with a grunt. 'Has Phalanx told you how he killed five husks with one shot yet?'

'That should not count – we used the Krysae rifle. It has explosive ammunition – no skill is required.'

'Effective, though, wasn't it?' He withdrew the needle.

'Well, then there's one more question I'd like to ask.' Garrus tried to stretch his grin as wide as possible without his face falling off, which seemed increasingly likely. 'Why is he wearing pink armour?'

* * *

><p>'Lola –'<p>

'James, you're just getting used to your new prosthetic. Moreover you've lost an eye. I hate to be blunt, you know I do, but how is your depth perception now?'

'I know, but Garrus –'

'Probably won't be going on the mission either. He's got his arm to get used to, just like you've got your lower leg. You both will be shipbound until the doctor says otherwise, am I clear?'

'Crystal, but Commander, this mission's meant to be a milk –'

'Nothing is a milk run with this fucking war on. We don't think there will be many hostiles there – but we could be wrong. We could be walking straight into a goddamn Sovereign-class Reaper with no backup and not at full capacity. So, until further notice, you are shipbound. Am I clear, Lieutenant?'

Vega nodded miserably. He hated it, hated the horrid itching feeling from where his left eye had been, the even worse itching from the damn medigel patch the doc had slapped over it. Hated the horrid feeling of having a foot with two toes and the whole damned thing curved in an upward arch – _I mean, couldn't the geth have made something a little more human for me? _But most of all he hated the uselessness of it.

He'd felt useful back on Earth, racing toward the transport beam. And when Harbinger had opened fire, he'd ducked and covered, as best as he could, edging his way towards it.

Well, until a steel bar had flown through the air, red hot and smacked him in the leg.

He'd known it'd been a bad break – he'd fucked up his bones before, and the familiar wrenching feeling was just as pleasant. It had been the fact it was virtually molten that had screwed him, melting his leg in place so he couldn't free it.

Then the next thing he knew, he was on a gurney missing the lower half of his right leg. And his left eye, to boot. They'd been trying to keep him under – he didn't know what he'd said, but he knew he'd found it funny.

Yeah, a real comedy.

He was a soldier. A soldier needed legs – to move, to run, to brace, to crouch, to vault. Things weren't as bad as he'd feared they might be – he had both legs, but one wasn't his. He wasn't used to the balance, the feel, the weight of it.

And a soldier needed eyes. To aim, to judge, to evaluate. What use was he with half his vision?

Lola had gone by then – she was fucking busy, by all accounts. Reapers retreated but not dead, yahg appearing out of nowhere, top secret missions from Hackett; it was a wonder she was still moving and not a little collapsed heap of exhaustion. But hey, that was part of what made her the best N7 soldier the academy had ever seen. People still wrote graffiti about her scores. And he'd seen her breeze through the vanguard evaluations a few months ago. Well. If he ended up half the soldier she was, he'd be proud.

_And now you won't even be that. _He rested against the bench and wearily rubbed the palm of his hand against his left eye. _I guess that should be 'socket', huh? _

'Excuse me.' The voice was a deep, polite rumble behind him. 'I was told you were the armourer.'

He turned and found himself face to face with a nightmare. Eight peering black eyes, wiggly gremlin ears, and larger than a krogan on steroids, the yahg in white towered over him. He suppressed the initial desire to jump, as he knew that he'd probably fall over if he did. 'You heard correctly. Uh, I don't mean to be rude, but who are you?'

'I am Shade. These are my tribe, Bahranik, Yassik, and Tehruk. We seek weaponry for the coming mission.'

'You guys are going?' He squashed jealousy. _They aren't crippled, Vega, and if they're anything like krogan they can bench press a tank. Well, probably not a Grizzly, but..._ 'What are you looking for?'

'We know little about your armaments. We were hoping that you could – ah – suggest something.'

Vega's lips twitched into a smile. 'Well, you came to the right man.' He took a cautious first step towards the weapons bench, then another more confident one. He didn't fall over if he got the first step – or he hadn't yet anyway. 'What are you looking for then?'

'I require a suppression weapon with high damage dealing capabilities, as does my comrade Tehruk.' The green skinny one nodded, and Vega made a mental note that he was Tehruk. 'Yassik would prefer long range single shot weapons without scopes of a small nature. And Bahranik...likes close combat.' The huge red yahg bared its teeth slightly.

Vega eyed them. 'You guys are large. Most weapons we've got are going to be too small for you. But on the other hand, that means you can use the big ones easily. So, uh, Shade? What you're describing, sounds a lot like a Revenant. I use one myself – it's not the most accurate gun on the block, but it more than makes up for it with high heat capacity and rate of fire.' He pulled one from the rack, flicked the switch that expanded it, filling his hands. 'This one's got a stabiliser in it to reduce recoil, and an extended barrel to increase muzzle velocity. Try it out.' He handed it into the huge white hands of the yahg.

Who promptly raised it one handed and moved it around with the same ease he might have brandished an SMG. 'It seems too light...'

_Damn. I was worried about this... _

'Well, if you find a light machine gun too light, try this out.' He'd been told the geth had brought the things with him when he'd arrived, and Cortez'd better have stowed them on the rack...

His hands met the sleek surface of a Geth Spitfire, death in metal form. He loved his Revenant, but he'd seen footage of Lola with one of these babies down on Rannoch. _Damn. _It had power, it had speed, and boy did it have ammo. He hefted it gently.

'This is a Geth Spitfire. Four hundred rounds in one power cell, and this thing can cut down a banshee in seconds. If you want power, rate of fire, and ammo, then this is the gun for you. Of course, power cells are as rare as rocking horse shit, and these things are normally pretty hard to find too.' His hands unwillingly left it to let Shade grasp it. 'Like the weight?'

'It has...heft.' Shade looked up. 'Is there anywhere I can test this?'

'Not without blowing out a wall, not really. I'll drag some crates around, see what I can set up.' Vega hobbled off _damn imbalanced stupid longer geth leg, how can the make a gun as brilliant as the Spitfire and not a damned leg _towards the crates.

'Armourer?'

'Yeah?' He turned slightly, before remembering that he didn't have a left eye, and turned fully.

'What is "rocking horse shit"?'

Vega's smile was wide. 'Oh man, I like you.'

* * *

><p>Shepard ran into her as soon as she got out the elevator. She'd been planning on going up to her room to sleep some more even before Chakwas had mysteriously appeared beside her and told her that now they were flying off to some new battlefield, she should get as much rest as she possibly could. So she'd jumped into the elevator, having been briefly waylaid by a desperate James.<p>

So when the door opened, Shepard mostly had been thinking before sleep thoughts of the incoherent variety, trying to forget the day, and it had almost been unwelcome to see Liara's beautiful blue face, eyebrows drawn together in a frown, long glorious hands fiddling with each other.

'Shepard...we need to talk.'

She leant back against the wall of the elevator. She was tired. She didn't want to talk. She wanted to sleep. But she wanted to talk too, knew that if they didn't talk now, the whole damn thing would get buried under the mountain of other stuff.

'Yeah.'

There was silence for a long time. Their eyes met, bounced away again to run over the thick grey walls of the room.

Then they both spoke at once.

'Shepard, I want to –'

'Liara, I know I –'

They both stared at each other again for a long silent moment.

'Liara. I'm sorry about the yahg.' She'd said it now. There it was, an apology. But it still felt feeble somehow, such a bald statement, not filled with the despair and anger and confusion of emotion. 'I should've told you before we boarded. It was just –'

'It's ok Shepard. I need to apologise too. I was – abrupt before. About the yahg. And – I'm sorry I couldn't say anything. Before. I don't blame you. I never could. You did what was necessary in an awful, awful situation.'

Shepard had almost forgotten the awful minutes with the Catalyst. 'It wasn't. It was desperation and anger and stubbornness and...' She looked back up at Liara. Took a breath. 'It was selfishness. I – I didn't want to die again. I didn't want to die again and never see you again and to lose us for even a fraction of an instant of a second. I didn't want to imagine a world with only one of us in it. That's why I did what I did. Not because of the greater good, or nobility, but because I didn't want to die.'

She looked away at the wall, and swallowed. 'Now tell me what I did was necessary.' Her eyes closed. She didn't want to see Liara's expression, her horror. _Let me just imagine for a moment that everything is fine. _

The sound of footfalls. The touch of a hand on her cheek. 'Shepard.' Voice soft. 'Look at me.'

They stood face to face, and their eyes met.

'Shepard, I could never hate you. I could never hate you because I did the same thing. I gave your body to Cerberus – to Cerberus, Shepard! – because they said they could bring you back. Maybe you made a mistake. Maybe I made a mistake. But I will never, ever stop loving you even for a single second, no matter how many yahg you bring onto our ship, no matter how long this war will last. I will love you.' Her lips stretch upward into a smile. 'Now, Shepard.' Her eyes swim into blackness. 'Embrace Eternity.'

An explosion of fire in the mind, an incinerating wave of passion as two minds become one.

* * *

><p>The three bolts of plasma slam into the crate sending it tumbling off the stack and to the ground.<p>

'The thing about the geth plasma shotgun,' said Vega, feeling more and more every minute like a door to door salesman, 'is that it retains the punch of a shotgun even at high distances. Now normally, from the sounds of things, you use pistols. This seems like the logical solution for you. Accuracy, strength, and – well, to you anyway – small size.'

And he was loving every second of it. It was great, debating the pros and cons of different weapons, their weights, their tactical advantages. The yahg were clean slates, capable of coming up with innovative uses of weaponry when told enough about its capabilities. They were _perfect_.

'Three – one?' The squat red one called Yassik shifted from one side to the other.

'I believe what my colleague is trying to say would be to inquire if there was any way to focus the plasma blast so only one concentrated shot with the power of all three was fired.'

'You'd have to ask the geth, but I'd not think so. It's something to do with the barrel probably.' He handed the shotgun to Shade, who peered down at it. 'You're welcome to try though.'

He turned to the last of them, the sullen scarlet Bahranik. 'And I've been saving something for you. This one's a krogan shotgun, called a Claymore. Powerful little thing. Give it a whirl.'

The yahg hefted the firearm cautiously, pointing it at the crates that were acting as hastily assembled targets. It fiddled with the stock before wrenching away the trigger guard in a twisting shriek of metal. 'What –this?' It fingered the button on the side that launched a Carnage rocket.

'That's a carnage –'

Vega didn't get to say anything else because it was then that the yahg pushed the button in. A red streak of light blasted into the crates, knocking them apart with a deafening boom.

The yahg grinned, its mouth splitting in three.

'I take it that's a thumbs up?'

'Indeed.' Shade moved forward, still holding the geth plasma shotgun. 'We thank you, Armourer, for your assistance.' He bowed, a deep bow. 'We shall convey your expertise to Commander.'

Vega grinned. 'No need. Lola knows I'm good.'

Shade frowned. 'Lola?'

'It's a nickname.' The frown deepened. 'You know, not their actual name, but something you call them.'

'Ah. We see. Thank you for your assistance, Armourer. We hope to speak to Lola Commander soon.'

Vega grinned again. _These guys may be smart as hell, but they still haven't got the hang of everything yet. _

* * *

><p>They lay side by side on sweat soaked sheets, skin to skin. Their breathing was the only sound that filled the air – well, the only one that mattered. The fish tank was bubbling disquietingly, and there was the near silent thrum of the Normandy's engine, but it paled in comparison to the sound of Shepard, <em>her<em> Shepard, breathing beside her.

'Liara?' Shepard's voice was not more than a whisper.

'Yes?'

'How come I could feel a second mind in yours?'

And suddenly it all came crashing down.


	10. 9: Morningstar, Part One

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect – if I did I would have got round to playing the Extended Cut by now. **

**AN: Hello, and sorry it took so long to update. Thank you to all the reviewers, favouriters, and alerters, and to M4GIC ORANGEZ and Lord Shel85 for their helpful words. As we all know, the EC was released last week. At that point I didn't really give a damn about it, and so didn't bother to download it. But I checked out what some people were saying about it, and apparently (I still haven't got round to playing it, I want my GRL to be at 100% before I do so I'm going on a bronze killing spree) it's good. Not perfect, but better than the original ending – though I think we'll all agree that that's not too hard. So for a while I had a crisis of faith. Was this fic even needed any more if the Extended Cut could end things well? I was having some writer's block too, mainly caused by writing at terrible times of day. Eventually, as you've probably guessed, I decided it wasn't needed, but I'd do it anyway, because just like the actual Mass Effect series, I've become attached to these guys and my plans for them. I can't just dump them. **

**So yes, this fic will soldier on. I won't be editing it based on the extended cut unless I think it's really necessary to ensure that this is near canon in terms of the universe. Also, can I beg of you not to discuss the EC in any great detail? I want it to, at least, be surprising. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy this. **

**Also, apologies for cliché. **

**Chapter 9: Morningstar, Part One**

Shepard didn't think she'd ever seen Liara's eyes widen that fast. 'I don't know what you're talking about.' She was a terrible liar, eyes twitching from one side to another, increased heart-rate, more rapid breathing.

'Liara...what is it?' She was becoming nervous now. She belatedly remembered Javik's story about his indoctrinated companions. Liara couldn't be indoctrinated though. Surely she would've noticed..._because after all Nihlus, Saren's lifelong friend, didn't notice his indoctrination_. _Fuck. Oh, fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

'I...Shepard, I don't know how to say this –'

'Tell me.' Her pulse was rocketing, the Cerberus Adrenaline booster kicking into overdrive. If Liara was indoctrinated and tried anything, she could probably knock her out – but biotics, damnit, she didn't have an answer to them. Did she want to?

'Well, the thing is – I'm – Shepard, can you just –'

'Tell me!'

'I'm – I'm pregnant.'

It took a few seconds for the words Liara had just said to sink in through the muddle of fight-or-flight chemicals that had been flooding her brain.

_She's what?_ Confusion, joy, worry...Shepard was bursting with the different emotions that the words caused. The first was anger – there was a war, how could Liara have thought it would be a good time to have a baby! Asari _chose_ when to be pregnant, so she must have thought about it. _And thought the war would be over soon – another own goal there, Shepard. _Then there was concern – was Liara ok, she was only a maiden after all, was she going to be alright, was she unwell, how long were asari pregnancies anyway. And then there was the joy. The satisfaction. _I __am__ going to have my little blue babies..._

'I – know you must be angry. That I did it without telling you. I just – '

'It's ok.' And it was. It was ok. She gave a laugh. 'It's ok.' Kissed Liara, again on the neck. A swelling tide of joy (and relief that Liara_ wasn't_ in fact indoctrinated) rose within her. 'We're having a baby.' The words weren't definitive enough. 'We're having a baby!' A shout of exultation.

And then they were both laughing and kissing again, and sinking back onto the bed, sheets wrapped around them.

A little while later, they were talking.

'How long are asari pregnant for?'

'About 11 of your months.'

'I thought it'd be longer. Because of how long you live.'

'Why would it? The ageing process slows over time. Matriachs look no older than earth women in their middle age, because the degradation of an asari's cells slows with time. Thus asari children age almost as fast as human children at first, but then development begins to decrease. I think I've told you this before Shepard.'

'Mmm. Still thought it'd be longer.' Another lightning sharp kiss, followed by a longer one.

A sudden thought struck her. 'Can she – ah, given that I noticed during – I mean –'

'No. I – don't think so. I hope not. No. No, her mind is connected to mine, but separate, like the Prothean Cipher in you. I can feel that it's there when we meld, but I can't touch it myself unless I'm aiming for it specifically.'

'Are you sure? I mean, I wouldn't want to scar her for life before she was even born. That would be possibly the worst parenting move in history.'

'Yes.' Another heavenly kiss, stretching on and on, pressed together.

'Liara? Do you mind me asking, but, ah...did this happen during the, uh, the gift of memories?'

'It is sometimes tradition that along with the gift of memories asari lovers will gift children to each other should something happen to one of them, but no, it was before that.'

'On the way to Cronus Station?'

'No. Ah, a little before that.'

'Oh. Then.'

It had been a few hours after the Thessia mission. They had both been pale and sad and seeking each other, Liara because her home was aflame, her people in ashes, and Shepard because she hadn't been able to save them. Oh, she knew it had to happen sometimes, but she really didn't enjoy it. Really didn't enjoy failure.

'Uh, why then?' She realised how tactless the question was a second after asking it.

'Because the asari were dying, and I wanted your little blue babies then, to make up for all the dead and dying. I wanted to even the scales, to show the Reapers just how little they are. It was a rather foolish gesture of defiance.'

'Nothing foolish about it.' She smiled so wide she felt worried her face might fall off, but she couldn't stop herself.

And that was when it went wrong.

Her alarm blipped. She'd set it to wake her up when they were two hours out from Elysium. Of course, she hadn't got any sleep, but that was what coffee was for.

'We have to get ready for the mission, Shepard.' Liara stood, stretched, began to hunt for clothes. Shepard stared at her back for half a second before her words registered.

'We? You're not going anywhere.' She swung her feet off the bed.

'Shepard, we have to do this mis –'

'Not what I meant. You're pregnant.'

Liara frowned for a second, then her eyes widened. Then she frowned again, more fiercely. 'I hardly see what that has to do with the situation.' Her voice was frigid.

'You could get hurt.' Shepard winced at how pathetic that sounded. She began desperately to hunt for her dress blue trousers – she felt sure they were somewhere in the room.

'And so could you, leaving me and her without you.' Liara was fastening her Alliance Uniform that she wore on missions shut.

'I'm highly unlikely to end up in a situation where I'm going to die.'

'Said the woman who charged a banshee full on shouting that she had it and was almost stabbed through the chest.'

'And – you're going to be more of a target.'

'I'm about four weeks pregnant, Alice, not four months. I look just as I normally do. And if I'm not mistaken, while the Reapers might be intelligent enough to exploit our relationship, I rather doubt a husk is.' She advanced towards Shepard, arms folded. 'I will be just as effective as I always am in combat. Nothing has changed. You were worried about my safety before, and as ever I am perfectly capable of handling myself.'

Shepard was becoming more frantic. 'You're a distraction.'

'No more than I normally am.'

'I won't be able to protect you and complete the mission objectives.'

'A dichotomy you've never managed before.'

And then she snapped. 'Fine! I _order_ you to stay aboard the Normandy! You are _not_ on the ground teams, and that is final!'

Liara's frown was deep. 'No, I don't think it is final, Commander. I'll see you in the briefing room.' And with that she'd stormed out.

Shepard had had twenty minutes to see what a fool she'd been. Of course Liara would be fine. Liara would be safer with Shepard to watch over her – leaving her on her own was more of a mistake, especially on the Normandy, a ship the Reapers had already proved they could detect. She didn't doubt Joker's ability to outfly the damn things, but she wasn't willing to take the risk, not with Liara. Or with her baby.

A small part of her bounced up and down when she thought that. Another part of her sat in shock, wondering who in the galaxy thought she'd be a good mother. She was about as good with children as she was with batarians, for crying out loud. She'd always liked the idea of children with Liara, but because they'd be like Liara, like having another brilliant part of her, another facet, another point of view. Now she was faced with the prospect, it was suddenly terrifying.

And then there was the worry, the blind panic. What if the thing killed Liara? What if she died, or the baby, or both? What if they killed each other, wasting away to nothing as Liara vomited up all she ate? Shepard had almost had a baby brother, but her mother had developed what was apparently called hyperemesis gravidae. The only way to cure her for certain had been to abort the baby. What if that happened to Liara? Could asari babies even be aborted in such a situation, or would it be akin to a lobotomy? She needed to ask Chakwas – would she even know about this? Would the extranet be any use? A wide open plain of endless questions opened before her.

_What have I gotten myself into? _

* * *

><p>Vega hurried out of the scanner, past the conference room, and into the war room. That Major Kirrahe guy was already in there, polishing a heavily modified Scorpion X – he wasn't even sure how you were able to fit three mods onto the damn thing, but the salarian had managed it. <em>If anyone would though, it'd be a salarian. <em>

The biotic woman, Jane or something, and a wide eyed other girl were sitting in a corner. Biotic lady was also glaring daggers at the room's most bizarre figure, a batarian in brilliant pink armour, fiddling with the extended barrel on his Shruiken X. He'd heard about the pink armoured batarian, both on the ship and via some chats with former buddies running missions for Hackett. Apparently Ksano Nabree was a good guy to have at your back – as long as you could stand his die hard defence of the Hegemony, and his hatred of humanity. Vega might have agreed with that if it weren't for his weapon choice – a Shruiken, really? _Then again, he's a Sentinel – man doesn't have to shoot straight or strong to kill the enemy. _

Next to him a white geth with a single glowing green eye was checking over a fully extended Widow VI. Geth were renowned for being steady shots, but Vega mainly recognised him as the guy who'd given him his shitty new lower leg, and had then skipped away to stare at Garrus.

EDI and Tali were there too, Tali doing something with her omnitool – probably checking on Garrus; he'd caught them macking in the engine room once – and EDI fiddling with the console.

And there was Lola, sitting in corner, looking like death warmed over and staring pointedly at her hands, and not at the very stiff backed Liara.

_Now that's not good. _

She looked up as he entered, and frowned at him for half a second before rising to her feet. She was in full dress blues, which seemed a little excessive for a briefing, but to each their own.

'Grunt? You hear me ok?' Even her voice was tired.

A crackle of static. 'Yes, battlemaster. I read you.' The low growl of the krogan's voice filled the room.

'Good.' A press of an omnitool button, and the map of the galaxy was replaced with a blueprint of some sort of complex. 'This is our target. For those of you who don't know what's going on yet, here are the facts. We've driven off the Reapers, more through luck than through skill. But they're coming back. We're going to need the weapons to beat them, which is why we're here. Project Morningstar was a highly classified Alliance research project, codenamed Morningstar, to develop better weaponry for N7 Operatives. The project fell silent shortly after the fall of Elysium, and so it was assumed that it had been overrun by Reaper forces. It had not. The scientists within transmitted a cry for assistance three days ago. We're answering that call. But we're not just here for them. We're here for what they represent. The knowledge they hold probably won't be the key to winning this war. I don't even think there is a key to winning this war. But with what they've made, we can help people on the frontline, help them fight better and harder. All of them. This is our target.'

_Ok...that kinda explains the diversity on this one. Was wondering why all these big people were hanging out with us, now I get it. This thing's semi-diplomatic – any tech we get, everyone gets. _

Shepard continued speaking.

'We divide into two teams. Team Shieldwall, you are to block off all exits and entrances to the building and hold off all hostile forces that are present. Major Kirrahe will be in command, with Jack, Phalanx, and two thirds of Aralakh company. The major places you need to defend appear to be here, here and here.' The floating diagram lit up red over three areas, one of which appeared to be a fairly standard entrance, another a back door leading into a corridor, and the third what was clearly a foyer.

'Meanwhile, the second team, Shadow Team, led by me, will enter the complex and sweep through it, looking for tech and scientists. We need to be fast – I don't know how many Reapers there are in this system, but I'm not risking losing the Normandy.' She looked up from the diagram. 'Any questions?'

Another hiss from the communicator. 'Where do you want me, Shepard?'

'Aralakh company are your men. Where do you think you'd be best?'

'Hmm.' A long pause. 'I think I'll join Shieldwall. I'm not one for staring at some fancy piece of technology when there's killing to be done.'

A faint smile crossed Shepard's face for half a second. 'Ok.'

'Uh, Shepard? How many hostiles are we expecting?' The biotic woman's thickly tattooed hands flexed against each other.

'EDI, have the scans of the planet finished?'

'Yes. They show large numbers of husks scattered across the planet with a concentration of Reaper forces on the site in question. They appear to be stationary.'

'How high a concentration?' The batarian's gravelly voice echoed across from where he sat.

'Approximately seventy five percent of all Reaper Forces on the planet.'

There was a brief silence as everyone contemplated that number. Vega's strong suit had never been maths, but in order to work with guns you had to have at least a basic grasp of numbers. And seventy five percent wasn't a very cheering number. _Normally Reapers leave a couple of hundred thousand guys on a colony world like this. So that's a hundred and fifty thousand guys we're going to have to fight through. Well shit. How the hell did the egg heads hold out for so damn long? _

'Hah!' Vega jumped at the shout from the communicator. 'I like this mission!'

Shepard grinned, and Major Kirrahe muttered something that sounded like 'Fucking krogan.'

'Any other questions?' There was silence. 'Then let's get moving, we leave in ten. I want everyone who can to be in armour and to have at least one gun of some description. Are we clear?'

Everyone nodded their assent, and turned to leave. But not him. As the others filed out, and Shepard bent over the console, he limped over and coughed politely.

Lola looked up.

'We've already had this discussion Vega. You're not coming on the mission.'

'Well, the thing –'

'No. No thing. You aren't combat ready. I would love to have you down there. I would. But given what we're meant to be up against, taking you in would almost certainly guarantee your death. So, no.' She strode for the door, Vega limping after her.

'I'm not asking for me – it's that –'

The door opened to reveal the huge figure of Shade clutching a Spitfire in his arms. 'Lola Commander, you I greet as my leader.' He bowed. 'Lieutenant have been showing us sufficiently useful weaponry that we may accompany on your mission, to fulfil our duties as yahg.'

Shepard glared at Vega. He tried to convey with a shrug that he had nothing to do with this really.

'Shade, I really do appreciate this. But, you're unfamiliar with our weapons, you haven't ever fought with shields before, and a lot of the enemies we're going up against are a lot more dangerous than anything you are likely to have faced before.'

'A correction. We have practiced with the weapons. Shields should not affect the basic combat, ah, principles, which is to avoid death unless it is necessary. And as to the dangers of the foes, I would expect no less. It is necessary for a worthy leader to have worthy enemies. Your only concern should be whether our tactics will be effective within your command.' His eight eyes blinked as one.

Shepard glared at Vega again. 'Fine. Be by the shuttles, ready to leave in seven minutes.'

'We thank you, Lola Commander.' He strode away before Shepard could reply.

For a long moment there was silence.

Then Shepard punched his shoulder. Hard. 'What on earth were you thinking?'

'They're our allies. They wanted to help.'

'They're also complete unknowns!'

'From the sounds of it, you'll need almost everyone you can down there, and I thought having a couple of super-tough aliens with Spitfires to back you up would be helpful. Sue me.'

Shepard's glare increased. 'Of course. You didn't do this because you knew I'd then have to bring you along.'

'What?' _Damnit, she saw through it. Shouldn't have tried to tell her before Shade showed up. _

'Of course. You're in charge of supplying the weapons on board the Normandy. So, you're going to monitor them. I expect you to stay behind cover and simply watch and correct them, which is why I'm not giving you a gun of your own, because then you'd simply use it.' She sighed. 'Just – try not to die.'

* * *

><p>Major Kirrahe was not a patient Salarian by nature.<p>

This was something of a virtue amongst the average Salarian – given their comparatively short lives, patience was something they could often ill afford. But not in the STG. In the STG, patience was the watch-word – waiting for the target to pass, waiting for the slow acting undetectable poison to take effect, waiting for the virus to destroy the firewalls, waiting.

But he'd trained himself for it. Carefully, slowly, surely. Taught himself the values of waiting.

Then he'd been promoted for an action singularly based around impatience. Shepard's impatience with Saren. It was something of a joke within STG circles, that Kirrahe had reached Major because of an action that was the opposite of everything the STG normally did.

But he'd held the line.

Now it looked like he'd have to do it again.

With krogan as backup.

'We're approaching the facility, Kirrahe-Major. Opening doors of shuttle to allow landing zone to be cleared in one minute.' The geth had decided to fly the shuttle. Phalanx, that was its name. Crack shot, according to its file and the observed footage of it in action. Its weapons were impressive too – a Widow with an extended barrel was capable of cutting through even the thickest armour plating, and a Krysae the ultimate Reaper killing gun, destroying multiple foes in a single shot. Of course, two sniper rifles weighed one down somewhat.

'Check weapons!' he ordered. He'd already checked his, and no matter how effective the children flying with him might be with biotics, he doubted they knew much about weaponry. Save Jack, but she'd been a pirate before, and a gangster, and a murderer. There was still a hanar contract on her head for the destruction of that moon. Kirrahe wondered briefly how she'd come to work with the Alliance – even the STG didn't have records of that. Shepard had obviously had something to do with it though.

He stood, drew his Scorpion X. It was a very good gun. 'Miss Jack, if you and your squad could also ready your biotics for an artillery assault?' The biotic artillery idea had been created by them, and it had already proved a very effective battlefield tool. If there were as many husks as was reported, he'd need that tool.

The biotic muttered something that sounded very rude. He wasn't sure though – STG removed all translation devices from their operatives, forcing them to truly know every language in the galaxy. He needed to brush up on his English.

Levelling his weapon at the door, he waited.

'Opening,' said the geth, and the shuttle door swung open to reveal a pleasant summer sky.

And beneath it was a sea of grey blue. Husks, stretching right up to the tall white building they were approaching. Thousands of them, tightly packed together.

And not one of them moving, not one of them shooting, or wandering around looking for victims. Every husk was lying reclined along the ground. As if suddenly dead.

He swept his targeting reticule over a mound of them and saw instant confirmation that was not the case as his omnitool assessed their strength levels, and projected how long it would be before they died onto his vision. _So. Not dead, but disabled. Impressive. _

_Still, one must be certain that this is not a ploy. Better to spring the trap now than when on the ground in danger. _

He pointed his sidearm down at the sea and opened fire. 'Open fire,' he said, just in case the others hadn't gotten the idea and were still staring blankly at the husks. 'They may be still, but we don't know when that will stop.'

A deep whooshing pulse of blue swept by him and made his ears pop. It cannoned spectacularly into a group of silent and recumbent Marauders, who vanished. The shuttle boomed suddenly, and his view shook slightly – _the geth must be firing the shuttle's weapons too. Good. _

A landing area became suddenly visible through the massed bodies stretched across it, and they came in to land, crushing many more. He leapt to the ground. 'Conserve ammunition where possible. If you can, destroy them with your close combat tools.' He triggered his omniblade, and it sprung from his wrist, electricity crackling along its length. He slammed it into the face of a Brute that lay full length in front of him. Behind him he could hear the distinctive whumps of warps being fired.

'Kirrahe-Major.' The geth leapt adroitly from the shuttle. 'What do you think has caused this paralysation?'

'Something here. Something we want.' He stabbed again at the Brute till his display told him it was dead. _Any device that can disable husks in this fashion...its uses would be manifold. Astonishing. _

Another shuttle swung towards them. This one was larger, cruder. It was not a Kodiak. But it was better armed, long rotary weapons on hard points on its hull, a vast turret upon its roof, and more missiles than he could shake a stick at. He liked that human expression, though he was unsure why anyone would be shaking a stick at anything.

It hovered over them, and then a single figure in white armour leapt from it with a growl. It landed with a thud beside him. Its right arm terminated abruptly below the elbow. 'This is not war! How are we meant to fight when they're all just lying around?' The krogan known as Urdnot Grunt kicked savagely at a Ravager's body.

'Good to see you too, you overgrown lizard.' The biotic's voice was friendly.

Grunt chuckled. It was not a friendly sound. 'Jack. Meet Aralakh company!'

More krogan leapt from the shuttle, holding shotguns, assault rifles, and heavy flamers. They landed with thuds. There were, he thought, fifteen in all. And that was before the last thing emerged from within the belly of the shuttle, ten feet from nose to tail of green scales and claws and teeth, and a heavy head frill.

The kakliosaur leapt down too, chittering angrily to itself. He'd heard how the krogan were using kakliosaurs as mounts, but he'd dismissed the idea as too bizarre – kakliosaurs were long extinct. Now he had to revise his opinion.

'Jarrod, you and yours see if you can find Shepard. I'll stay here with Shepard 2 and the salarian.'

'Wait wait wait.' The biotic's voice was incredulous. 'You called your dinosaur Shepard?'

'A warrior without peer, who's saved our asses more than once, and could've beaten Shiagur in close combat? There were too many parallels for me not to have, Jack!'

Kirrahe sighed as he contemplated spending the next few hours standing next to ten angry krogan complaining about the lack of a good fight, and their large reptilian creature. _Perfect. _

* * *

><p>Shepard poked the banshee with her foot. It didn't move. It didn't leap to its feet with a shriek and stab her through the chest. Nor did it leap at Liara.<p>

'Shepard, this is incredible. If we could replicate whatever caused this, the Reaper ground forces would no longer be a problem, freeing up vital resources to destroy the Reapers.' EDI seemed virtually ecstatic as she scanned a slumped Cannibal, unprimed grenade clutched in its hand.

'Indeed.' Shade and his friends were staring at the husks with an expression on their faces that might have been disappointment. Vega looked pretty down too, though that was mainly because Shepard had confiscated the Carnifex pistol he'd had hidden on him when he got into the Shuttle. The batarian was studiously crushing each husk's head with his heavy pink boot.

And Liara...was still studiously ignoring her. _Great job there Shepard. You should seriously get an award for shortest time between resolution of one quarrel and start of the next. _

'Grunt, Kirrahe, can you read me?'

'_Loud and clear battlemaster.'_ Grunt sounded sulky, and knowing him he probably was. So many enemies, and not one able to fight. _'Jarrod's heading over to your landing zone with five of my best men. Though it looks like we won't need them.' _

'_Thankfully,'_ cut in Major Kirrahe's voice, _'as the numbers here appear to be even higher than estimated. So far I cannot determine what has caused the mass – shutdown, I suppose would be the word for it. Husks have clearly biological neural systems, and thus there would be no clear way to override the control systems placed in them.' _

'Well, keep checking them, and clear the area around you. This still might be an ambush.' Turning to her squad, she gestured for them to follow after her, into the main lobby of the building.

Scientists, particularly human scientists, weren't known for making their workplaces particularly beautiful. The lobby was large, granite slabs composing the walls, a small table with chairs round it, a now defunct security field beside a desk. The floor too was littered with stationary husks as outside.

She advanced cautiously across them, through the empty scanners. Stairs were visible ahead, lit under the harsh glow of a blue tinted LED light on the wall. Husks were scattered across them too.

_How did the scientists hold out so long against such numbers? We only got their distress call recently...if they'd disabled the husks long before then, why did it take so long to get it touch? And if they did it sooner...then why weren't they long gone? _

_I don't like this. _

_I really don't like this. _


	11. 10: Morningstar, Part Two

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect! If I did I'd have unlocked all the Earth DLC characters already and the Crucible wouldn't exist. Also, I'm going to be increasingly nicking stuff from that brilliant SF Author Neal Asher, so I don't own his Polity books either. **

**AN: Wow it's been a while. Life has been gruelling, and I apologise for the long wait – it's partly my own fault as I insisted on waiting till I completed the Extended Cut before writing any more, then I got blocked, then I rediscovered this series of original stories I'd written ages ago, but the last one was unfinished so I'm finishing it off then rounding off the series with an epic finale and BLARGH. It's hilarious how much I have to do and how little of it I've actually **_**done**_**. In the meantime, thank you all for sticking with this, and I hope to update in the next few days. Thank you. **

**Also, I'm still ignoring the Extended Cut, and I'm also ignoring some of the Earth DLC background. It'll still show up – just the history behind the weapons might be a little different. **

**EDIT: Shit, Theodur just pointed out that there's already Praetorians in the ME universe. Whoops. Name change time!**

**Chapter 10: Morningstar, Part 2**

Garrus sat at his console.

_I should be on the ground_. His arm was fine, the internal pain in his torso minimal, his mandible only slightly off kilter. Ok, his legs were killing him, but he could've lived with that. Given the lack of action, he could have parked himself in a scientist's comfy chair.

_I should be watching Shepard's six_. She was his commander, his boss, his friend. She needed someone to watch her back, even when it wasn't being covered by swarms of husks. And while he trusted Tali and Liara, and EDI, he didn't trust the yahg. And no-one was as fast as him. That wasn't a boast, it was simply true. They'd had a competition back during the hunt for the Collectors, and he'd outshot every member of the crew save Legion, where Shepard had finally called a tie after two hours and dozens of demolished crates. Legion wasn't around anymore – he needed to be there.

A lesser turian might have given up. But not Garrus.

'Ok, turn left a little.'

Obligingly, the camera view on his omnitool shifted obligingly leftward to pan over the technology adorning the walls.

'This is a really bad idea Garrus.' Tali's voice was a whisper into his ear.

'A bad idea.' He gave a snort that turned into a cough. _Damnit lungs, why do you let me down? _'Is that what I think it is?'

A sigh. 'Yes. That is a handheld version of a thanix cannon. Do you want me to leave you two alone?'

'Don't be silly Tali, I'm on the Normandy. Handheld? Really? Presumably it's only as strong as the ones equipped on fighters.'

An omnitool flared into view over the object. 'No, the power requirement is...wow.'

_That's definitely the right word. _The power figures he could see were almost as high as those for the Normandy's Thanix, and that was just for the standard setting. Tali's omnitool readout also showed it could be triggered into overdrive – higher power consumption but thicker bursts. The only downsides he could see was that the ferrous metal that comprised its ammunition needed to be replaced after every sixty seconds of continuous firing – and that to fire it for that long one would need about ten standard power cells. The thing was even more power hungry than the Cain. _But oh boy does it need it. _

'Tali, we've found another log.' Liara's voice was unnaturally loud, as Garrus had increased the volume to hear Tali's whispered comments. Wincing, he began modifying the feed to vary the volume based on sound level.

A man's voice echoed from the datapad in her hands, and Garrus was pleased to notice that this time he wasn't deafened. '...Simmons won't admit I'm right about this. Doubling the coils gives more power, yes, but more instability. That's what caused the damn com-tower failure – I just hope there's nothing else going on in the galaxy that we really need to know about. On the other hand, our test version of the rocket boots is up and running, despite Dr Lewis's broken nose. They're great fun, which I guess is kind of the point. Best thing is, they don't require electricity to work, so they won't be knocked out by any form of EMP. It means they're a bit slow though – if you could hook them up to the omnitool software then you could activate them in midair. That'd make you virtually immune to biotics.'

'That sounds...familiar.' Tali's voice was thoughtful.

'Yes.' Garrus and Liara said it almost simultaneously, and he felt brief annoyance.

It wasn't that he didn't like Liara. Liara was his friend. They'd joked together on board the first Normandy, and after Liara had rejoined the crew they'd struck up their friendship again.

But it was the gap in between that bothered him.

_You don't abandon your CO. _It was drilled into turians virtually from the moment they could understand speech. And in many ways Liara hadn't while everyone else had. She'd never given up on the idea that Shepard could, in a sense, come back. She'd been the one to retrieve her body from the Shadow Broker, and hand it over to Cerberus.

But then...she'd just stopped. Liara had set off on her revenge haunted quest against said Shadow Broker, and left Shepard alone.

He knew all about revenge, about wanting to kill someone for what they'd done to you. But he'd tracked down Sidonis while on the Normandy – couldn't Liara have kept up her war with the Shadow Broker in the same position?

He sighed. That was all in the past now. She'd more than made up for it. But there was always going to be a hesitation in their friendship because of it.

'Wait...Cerberus Phantoms.' Tali's voice was shocked. 'Another one?'

And that was the other reason Garrus wanted to be on the ground.

The first log they'd found had indicated it, and virtually every piece of evidence since, from gently curving swords that EDI insisted were similar to those used by Kai Leng to an actual Atlas, complete with a complaint from an engineer about how they were designed to be mass produced and not worthy of N7 indicated that somehow this place was linked to Cerberus. Garrus didn't know how, and given how the groups had separated to search the labs he couldn't ask Tali to ask Shepard what she thought.

_Were they all traitors? Certainly some of them weren't – they had too much pride in their work. _Cerberus equipment was good – he even used some of it, a Cerberus modified Mattock they'd nicknamed a Harrier being his favourite assault rifle – but often it was factory style, useless, and gimmicky. Like the armour for the Assault Troopers – next to no shielding, thin plates, minimum of HUD. Totally relying on the Reaper based enhancements to power them through the fight. And that was before he got onto their weapons – one submachine gun? Really?

But some of the stuff they were finding was seriously, scarily good, and Garrus shuddered to think what Cerberus could have done with it. The monomolecular bladed swords had been modified, one to carry a tech burst current, hurling it forward in a series of overload explosions, another to channel biotic energy. They'd been made stronger than the ones the Phantoms carried too – the report beside them had said that these were to be specialists' swords, not like the "standard weapon design we've been working from". An omni-tool program that allowed for a dense burst of freezing Bose-Eisenstein Condensate that acted like an anti flamer, allowing for quick incapacitation of lightly armoured foes to be dealt with later. Some form of armour that, while about as protective as wearing varren skin, enhanced biotics to very high levels indeed, nicknamed 'Fury' by the engineers.

Vega hobbled into Tali's, and therefore Garrus's view. He was clutching some bulky gun in his hands. 'Look at this...isn't it beautiful?'

It was a shotgun, so Garrus kept his thoughts to himself, but he heard Tali's small appreciative murmur. 'Give me the stats.' _And there's the engineer I love. _A burst of affection shot through Garrus. He'd never really felt that way about any – _Pay attention, gun now, mooning later. _

'It's called an N7 Piranha, for reasons that should be obvious – ah, if you were from Earth. I'll come back to that. Anyway, it's short range, very short cause of its spread, damage somewhere in the region of a high class Eviscerator, but, the best part is the rate of fire.' He spun the six chambered cylinder on the top of the gun. 'One thermal clip goes in each slot here, with another engaged, right? Eight shots per clip, you just turn it to feed the next one in once its ready, ejects the other automatically. Its rate of fire is high, and I mean high for a shotgun, maybe as fast as one of the big heavy pistols if you were pumping the trigger. Of course, here you can just hold it down. It weighs a tonne – little thing is compact! – but it packs a punch.'

'Hmm. I think I'll stick to my Claymore for now.'

'I'm going to go see if I can find some of the others.' Liara's voice drifted from the right of Garrus's screen. 'Have the krogan checked in yet?'

'No.' Vega's voice was regretful. 'Don't know where the yahg have wandered off to either. They seemed pretty excited to be here though.'

_I should be down there. _For a moment Garrus considered leaping to his feet, gathering his gear and storming down to the shuttle bay to join them.

_Yeah, but Chakwas would kill me, bring me back to life so Shepard could kill me, and then Tali would torture me to death with a rusty – what's that human eating utensil called again...a spoon, that's it. Best to observe. _

_But what if things have gone wrong? What if things are already wrong? The krogan meant to be with Shepard haven't appeared, and those yahg aren't trustworthy. _

_Then I'll go down when I see something's wrong. _Garrus settled back, and continued to watch over his omnitool.

The yahg who now called himself Shade stared in amazement at the device in front of it.

* * *

><p>It was nearly twice his height, gleaming grey black metal with the red and white stripes down its arm. No clumsy cockpit for this machine – instead, it looked as if the pilot simply slid in, was closed up, and then linked their omnitool to the armour, and controlled it like that. For armour it was, like his silvered spacesuit of his own design, but far greater. It incorporated shielding, far better than the one hastily stuck onto his suit by a nervous technician, designed for civilians going into warzones (or so he had assumed from its hideously low output and efficiency). This shielding was angled, reinforced, with redundancies and backups should it fall. And due to how it was controlled...well, it would be like an extension of oneself. No jerky plodding motions, like those of the machines in the stories of the more advanced tribes.<p>

And that was before he considered the weapons. Its selection was modular, starting with simple arms. Each arm, in truth, contained a vast blade well over the width of his ga'tharn'ikta's, which could extend with a thought. Such blades also vibrated at high speeds, allowing even the densest materials to be cut through as if they were but earth. Then the guns – vast rotating weapons, capable of expending their entire blocks that supplied their ammunition within mere minutes. Cannons that could destroy tanks in a mere shot. Missiles with payloads scaleable from a warm gust of wind and a friendly slap to vast nuclear detonations.

All controlled by a highly advanced targeting system, with the aid of a 13th Generation VI.

Or so the datapad he read claimed.

He knew hyperbole when he saw it – he'd employed it often enough to persuade other tribes to buy his wares – but looking at the machine he could almost believe it. The thing was sleek and beautiful and deadly. It was also unsuitable for a yahg, but if he had the design...his fingers twitched in pleasure at the thought of what a true warrior could do with such a weapon.

And that was before he even considered the VI. The idea of them fascinated him – a machine, intelligent enough to handle high level calculations yet not smart enough to challenge its creator. He liked that.

'It is perfection,' he said in the language of his tribe.

Then Shade remembered he was not alone when the strange four eyed alien in the hideously bright armour looked up at him questioningly. 'Excuse me?' His voice was a pleasing rumble at least, but it was also in asari due to the translation program on his omnitool.

He hated the asari language. He'd learnt it from necessity, because he knew he'd have to talk to the aliens, but it was a disgustingly inefficient language. _A triple form for nouns and verbs but no dual – no locative case or dative, and no clear differential between different gender nouns? _When he'd first started learning it he'd thought he must be going wrong somewhere – only confirmation through the alien's extranet had proved that he had been correct.

English was, if anything, worse. No declensions, verb forms – the best that could be said for it is that it was _simple_.

He hated simple things.

Chinese was little better – the idea of characters was foolish in the extreme. French suffered in similar ways to English, though not as awfully. Strangely it was the long gone human languages that were the best, though he'd not found much more on Latin and Sanskrit than a couple of pathetic guides to teach oneself on the extranet.

'I was commenting on machine.' His words were soft. It was harsh on his vocal cords to be soft, but one had to lull others. He was also trying out speaking in English – he wasn't sure he'd gotten it completely correct, but no matter. Better that they think less of the yahg. Which wasn't hard given his companions. Bahranik was still sulking, despite the impressive weaponry he'd been gifted with. Yassik and Tehruk were off somewhere, squishing the somehow incapacitated enemies.

That was a twist. All reports indicated the Reapers were truly dangerous foes. Some way of disabling their servants didn't sit well with him. How was he to prove himself in combat to be trusted with more technology, more knowledge, if the foe was no longer a threat?

'It's inelegant.' The alien's tone was angry, or at least it would have been if he were a yahg. 'I don't like N7, but they're stealthy. This is about as stealthy as the Reapers.'

N7. This term appeared time and time again, and still Shade was not certain of its meaning. No matter.

'Strong.' Tehruk's grunt was asari – the other's were finally learning the languages he had insisted they learn years before. Of course, they wouldn't have to forever – the translation program was remarkably efficient, and while it was taking him a while to create an accurate dictionary of his tribe language, the basics would be completed soon.

'It doesn't matter how strong it is if someone opens up on it from orbit, or launches the entire firepower of their base against it.' The alien's head was cocked to the right as he looked up at them.

_Maybe that is the point_ thought Shade. _Maybe this acts as the distraction so the true enemy can enter undetected. If there's a rampaging hu'ntya, one doesn't notice the hidden grax'la. _He didn't say this. Let them underestimate them.

Instead, he gave the gesture that according to the extranet was called a shrug, a sign of indecision and lack of knowledge. The alien looked away, and he returned to the datapad, reading through it as fast as he could, and copying everything he found to his omnitool.

_Knowledge is power. Guard it well. _

'We got anything from the computers yet to see if this is all it's made out to be?'

* * *

><p>'Negative Commander. The majority of the computer files have been destroyed by a virus of surprising virulence, and much of the operating system is malfunctioning. Moreover, the computer regards me as another unauthorised intruder, despite my frequent broadcasts of Alliance protocol.'<p>

'So have we got anything at all?'

'No. Not yet.'

Shepard sighed. The labs had been in many ways something of a bust. Sure there was a lot of cool technology. The problem was they'd encountered most of it before, in Cerberus hands. Of course, there were some new things.

A cackling roar of laughter behind her signalled that Aralakh Company's 2IC was playing with his new toy. A broad orange shield spread from his right arm as he swung it in a wide arc. 'Shepard, this is truly marvellous!' said Urdnot Jarrod in a cheerful bellow. 'Combined with tech armour, well...us krogan would be truly invincible.' His mouth was a wide grin.

The omni-shield was just one of the things that they'd found that were actually new and useful. It was one of the best too, though most not imbued with the upper body strength of krogan found the diamond crystallised slab somewhat harder to lift and move around with. Another was an armoured battlesuit called the T-5V, which was in Shepard's opinion a rather dull name, but it was heavily armoured and capable of laying down ridiculous fire support, especially given the machine gun they'd found it with.

And yet Shepard still felt a worming sensation of disquiet, and of unease. There was something strange about all of this, and not just the Cerberus stuff.

Where were the scientists? Or at least their decaying bodies? If they were dead, how had they sent off the distress call? Unless one was wounded, and died of his wounds, then the whole situation was a little implausible.

And that was without the husks' bodies, lying on the floor in a seriously creepy way. They were alive alright – just unresponsive. They'd methodically cleared every room they'd been through.

_Of course you're uneasy – you still haven't made things right with Liara, because you're an idiot and don't know what to say. _She gave a snort. _Commander Shepard doesn't know what to say – the news networks would have a field day with that. _

On top of that she felt strangely weighed down. She'd taken a full soldier loudout: grenades, assault rifle, sniper, shotgun, pistol, and she'd forgotten just how much it all weighed and how much less manoeuvrable it made you. Every time she went into cover against a wall to peer round a corner just in case, she could feel them digging into her back.

_Goddamnit Shepard, you did this for years before you had biotics, what's the issue now? Lack of practice is all. Deal with it, solider. _

'Alright, let's check out the next lab. Any more datapads in here before we go?'

Jarrod grunted. 'No. Just this one, which only had credits on it.'

'Good enough.' She pushed a hand against the open button for the next doorway, and slipped through as the doors began to open, EDI just behind her.

The next room was pretty much like all the labs – grey white, desks, computers, equipment...but this one was stained with blood. Thick dried layers of it coated the walls, and the thick rusty smell of it filled Shepard's nose. It decorated the desks with deep scarlet splashes, and coated some of the equipment too.

It was the first sign of death they'd seen in the whole facility.

'Alright, check this one out carefully – EDI, can you get scans of the blood, see if you can tell whose it was and why it's there. Jarrod, we need to do the normal, look for any useful tech.'

She strode at a half crouch between the tables, modified Mattock springing to her hand. From the first moment the Mattock had been sent to the SR2 she'd loved it – and taken it on every mission, in the process improving it so much that all it took was a headshot with Inferno Ammunition and a hostile was down. Then had come her imprisonment and the Normandy's renovation, and when she had returned her souped up Mattock was gone, and all the others she could find were...terrible. Not enough stopping power, not enough accuracy. Until Tali and Garrus rejoined the crew. It had turned out that when they'd all gone their separate ways, Garrus had taken the Mattock for safe keeping, but during the attack on Palaven it had been damaged. Despite his technical know-how, he couldn't get it working the right way again. At least, until Tali rejoined the Normandy crew, and fixed it in thirty minutes.

_It's __**my**__ gun. _It was, in a way. Shepard loved it like any member of her crew. It had been through almost as much. There was the burn from where the stock had melted slightly in the burst of heat from a vorcha flamer, there the scratch from where she'd smacked a charging krogan in its faceplate. A long score down one side – _that was from the Shadow Broker, I think. _She hadn't been able to use it as often as she would've liked due to her change in tactics with her biotics. Now, she could, and despite all the other disappointments it brought it was a relief to hold it again, to feel the cold black stock against her shoulder, and to see that tiniest of crosses on her HUD.

_Stop reminiscing Alice. May not be hostile territory at the moment, but that may change. Still don't know what's causing the massed husk paralysis. _

'Commander, I think I've found something.' EDI's face was lit up by the omnitool around her hand. 'I've found what appears to be the remains of a severed right arm, but thankfully it has an omnitool attached. While the omnitool has been damaged, its last few files are available, including an intriguing sound file.'

An orange box flickered into place over EDI's omnitool, a sin wave beginning to move across it. 'Goddamnit, how could Simmons do this?' was the first voice from it. 'He was head of the project. What was he –'

'Money, probably.' The second voice was stern. 'Whatever it was, he's got some things to answer for. The attack on the Citadel...the attack on Eden Prime...'

'Well, thank the Maker we got the com tower open, at least to receive.' The third voice was female. _The scientists, I think. _'Otherwise we wouldn't have known anything about what he was doing until it was too late.'

'We have to confront him.' The first voice again. 'Now. We have to confront him _now._ We can't let him come up with an excuse. Not after so many have died. Because of him. Because of us.'

Sounds of walking. Shepard took the opportunity to interrupt. 'So they found out about Cerberus.'

'It seems that way.'

'Also seems like not all of them were in on it.' Jarrod's voice was gruff. 'At least, not the rank and file.'

Meanwhile, a door had opened in the recording. A new voice emerged. 'Please don't interrupt, I'm at a crucial stage of – ah, hello.'

'Why'd you do it? Why'd you throw it all away?' The first voice was distraught.

'Please Lewis – calm yourself. To what do you refer?' Shepard decided that the guy they were talking to, _presumably this Simmons guy_, was far too slimy for his own good.

'You know what we mean Simmons. We know what you've been doing.' The second voice was firm.

'Cerberus. You've been sending plans of the equipment we've been working on, and sending them to Cerberus. Why?'

A sigh. 'I was wondering when the com tower would come online again. I take it you've already alerted the Alliance to my crimes.'

'We've only got incoming. Once we have outgoing again, we will. Until then, we're locking you in your lab. You won't have access to anything – not the computers, not your omnitool, not any of our equipment. Then, when the Alliance finally come to free us from the goddamn Reapers knocking on our door, we'll release you into their hands.'

'Please. As if you could've lasted a day without me. Who organised the blockades in the halls? Who was it who found the weaknesses in the sewer system, and set guards over all the facilities, preventing any intruders? Who was it who made a device capable of sending a signal separating the Reaper ground forces from their controllers in the sky, effectively rendering them paralysed.'

'That's it!' Shepard's shout was triumphant. 'That's the thing that's got all the husks down. He said a signal – EDI, can you find any signal out of the ordinary?'

'One moment, Commander.'

The recording continued. '-and if you think I am alone, you would be wrong. This base is Cerberus's, as are your lives.' A noise of rapidly moving metal, of bone and flesh being cut through. A scream. Then static as the recording ended.

_Simmons obviously pulled some sort of weapon – a sword? I don't know. Cut them down. _

_So who sent the signal to the Alliance? And where is he? _

'Commander, I have one. It's emanating from the room the blueprints tell me is the communications hub.'

'Call Tali, tell her to meet us there – if there's some sort of device, she can scan it and copy the scan up to your memory on the Normandy.' _This is what we came here for – something to win the fight with the Reapers, and I'll be damned if I'm leaving without it. _'Jarrod, get your guys, we might be leaving soon. Tell them to pack up anything useful – that battlesuit, the huge thing Ksano called in, the swords – anything that might be helpful, got it?' She pushed a finger to her ear and waited for her omnitool to connect. 'Kirrahe, can you hear me?'

'Yes Commander.'

'We're almost done here – keep an eye out for movement from the husks, but be ready to pack up and go.' She was already striding from the room, the map in the corner of her HUD telling her where the com room was, and the best was of getting there. In many ways, the HUD integral to her eyes was one of the best upgrades beyond human that she had – it was just a pity that it wasn't Cerberus, but Alliance standard, and the Cerberus goons had messed with it and made everything different. She'd managed to at least reset it to Alliance blue rather than that horrid orange colour it had been when she'd first woken up.

Tali was soon beside them. 'You've found something?'

'You bet we have. We found a recording making reference to a device that blocks the Reaper signal used to control the husks – '

'- paralysing them. Hmm. That would be quite clever, but the signal has been almost impossible to find. The quarians tried similar things with the geth to prevent them uploading their programs, meaning they lost more than platforms...' She shrugged. 'It never worked. They just piggybacked their signal on our interference signal. Why wouldn't the Reapers do the same?'

'Why haven't they here?'

'Fair point.'

The door whooshed open ahead of them, and almost instantly the smell of decay hit them. Seconds later, Shepard found its source.

A body in a scientist's suit lay curled up beside a computer, gaping hole in his back. He'd obviously been there for some time – he'd already begun to putrefy, flesh falling in.

Also present were three podia. On one, some sort of wrist attached device had been placed. And the second –

- was dominated by a vast whirring machine. Little lights flickered on and off across its surface. It was hooked up by thick black cables to the computer, where a wave flicked across its screen.

'This is it!' They were almost done here, on this creepy planet with the creepy laboratory and the paralysed husks. _And Liara is almost out of whatever danger this planet holds, and then I can be rational and apologise rather than standing around feeling that I was right. _

Tali was already moving forward to look at the device. Her omnitool flickered into life.

EDI was already at the keyboard of the computer, hands flicking across the keys. 'Shepard, my scans indicate the item on the first podium may be of some interest to you.'

She looked at it. It still looked like a wrist mounted device. Small. Compact. 'What is it?'

'A weapon. Designated Shruiken by its designers, if it's to be believed. Some sort of VI guidance.' EDI was now too buried in whatever she was looking at on the computer to really talk. This happened sometimes – EDI still found what she called 'human-speed' fearfully slow, and often when presented with a computer screen slipped almost completely into her much faster calculating speeds, where she had little time for the slow work of speech.

Shepard examined the device. It was fairly obviously designed to link with an omnitool – the little spines on its underside for connecting to the nervous system were obvious. The rest...was different. There was some sort of blue light on it, on some sort of squashed sphere shape. The rest looked like a black metal rail over a bracer of armour. Cautiously she picked it up. It was surprisingly light. Even more cautiously, she slid the bracer onto her right arm, and waited for it to connect.

With a stab of pain, it did. Shepard hissed as for a moment electricity surged through her nervous system, a side effect of connecting anything directly to the omnitool.

The bracer lit up some more, a few more lights flickering into being.

Then her omnitool informed her that a new program and hardware had been installed, along with something about antivirus software that she closed. The program was simply named 'Launch', and had already appeared in her HUD.

Cautiously, she selected it with a flicker of her eyes.

Her right arm had been outstretched and pointing at the wall, which is why she didn't hurt anyone. Something rocketed from the bracer with a whirring snikt, a blur of black and blue and silver, slicing through the air and slamming into the wall, leaving a cut deep into it, before hurtling back towards her, stopping a metre away.

Three curved and equidistant blades now had emerged from the squashed sphere, and it rotated, slowly, in midair. Then, spinning up to speed again, it began to circle her.

'Shruiken, huh?' Shepard grinned. She liked it, despite her initial surprise. Checking the HUD she noticed the Launch command had changed to Return. She triggered it, and was unsurprised to see the whirring circle flip down from head height and rocket onto her wrist with a click, blades retracting.

Tali peered from behind the device. 'That was cool. Can I get one?'

'I'm afraid there's only one, Tali.' EDI's voice was firm. 'This was the prototype. We could, of course, make more.' She turned her head to Shepard. 'However, I have found something disturbing.'

'As have I.' Tali's voice became more serious. 'Shepard, this machine doesn't use eezo.'

'What?' _Everything uses eezo. _Not that it needed to, but most generators found their task more efficient with lighter parts, and so on.

'I believe I have an explanation for that.' EDI moved away from the computer, turning to face them. 'The file I have found makes reference to some sort of archaeological discovery made when expanding the mess hall, some sort of coral-like technology that didn't use the mass effect. It says they weren't able to do much with it, save make two things – the Reaper Signal Blocker and Shruiken. Ah. Both of these were designed by Dr. Eugene Simmons. That is also his body on the floor.'

'What happened to him?'

'Unknown. He repaired the com tower, according to his journal, and having dealt with those scientists who opposed him sent out a distress signal to the Alliance so he could continue his work, and a report to Cerberus. Then nothing.'

'So what happened to the original tech, the one they made this from?'

'There are references to some sort of artefact on the third podium within the computer systems...' EDI frowned. 'I cannot find any direct mentions of it.'

Shepard looked round. 'EDI, there's nothing there.'

'Security footage has been located within computers. The virus has not yet destroyed them. I am searching for signs of what propagated the virus, and killed Dr. Simmons.'

Tali's voice echoed from behind the podiums. 'This machine is brilliant! I don't know how it works, but without the mass effect one would have thought that it would be hideously inefficient. But it's...well that's strange.'

'What?' Shepard's voice was terse.

'I'm picking up some sort of eezo reading from it. I wasn't before. It looks familiar on the scan, sort of like a – '

'Shepard – '

EDI had barely finished her word when the blast caught them. Shepard went tumbling, head over heels, landing hard on her back. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Tali flung clear of the Reaper Signal Blocker, EDI pulling herself to her feet.

Shaking her head to clear it from the ringing impact, Shepard hauled herself to her feet.

'Report!'

'I'm ok, Shepard.' The front of Tali's suit was blackened. 'But the – oh no.'

The Reaper Signal Blocker was a smoking twisted mess. Sparks shot from its surface.

'The signal has disappeared. Shepard...' EDI's voice was almost fearful. 'The husks are waking up.'

* * *

><p>Slowly, communications that had been closed for months reopened. Things twitched, and began to climb to their feet. They began to link together, to exchange data as to their situation. The overall command from above had not changed – destroy all within their path. And they would not be alone in this.<p>

Deep beneath the Morningstar Facility, amidst stirring Brutes and shifting Marauders, in a tunnel half carved by man and half carved by monster, something stirred, a single red eye shifting open on it.

It hauled itself to its feet, system checks running. Somehow it had been shut off, but now it was awake again, ready to once again kill and maim and harvest.

A brilliant burst of red shot from its main weapon, destroying the last few feet of metal that stood between it and entrance to the facility. Its forces moved around it. Soon, all would feel the wrath of an Immortal.


	12. 11: Morningstar, Part Three

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect, or the Polity books by Neal Asher. **

**AN: Goddamn I wrote this fast. I love writing action! Anyway, thank you to the brilliant reviewers of the last chapter, and to all the favouriters and alerters! This chapter was growing so massively I've decided to split it in two, ending on a cliffhanger here (bwahaha). I don't know any Spanish, so while I've got only a few words of it in this chapter, I'd appreciate if those who did could check me, as Google translate is often as accurate as a 15****th**** century handgun. **

**Thank you, and enjoy. **

**Chapter Eleven: Morningstar, Part Three**

Liara knew for certain that something was wrong when the Cannibal on the ground in front of her began twitching. Instinct had her reaching for her N7 Hurricane. A single burst was enough to put it down, but already she could hear the several disparate moans, cries and shrieks that indicated that the Reaper forces were no longer dormant.

She'd wandered away from the others, still boiling with an icy drawn out rage at Shepard's idiocy. _Of course I'm going to be fine. You're here, as ever, to protect me, and I still have all of my biotics and the skills I've learnt from you. _She'd let her feet take her through lab after lab, still trying to work out what in the Goddess' name Shepard had been thinking on the Normandy.

She checked the map. As far as she could tell, she was almost on the other side of the labs from the majority of the others, and if the husks were waking back up...

She would be fine. Most of the labs had been cleared, each husk stabbed, bludgeoned or shot, until they displayed no signs of life. Though she hadn't done this in the labs she'd been through, too wrapped up in her anger and sense of hurt that Shepard thought she couldn't fight.

_Well I can fight. _A pair of Cannibals, a Marauder between them, lurched from behind a corner. She slapped the Marauder in biotic stasis with a flick of her fingers, then launched a roil ball of shifting gravity at the first Cannibal. It staggered back, its flesh being torn away. The second got off a couple of shots before her Hurricane stuttered out a death knell, blowing away the majority of its face. Her gun swung round, another burst blowing away the first Cannibal in a biotic explosion as her Warp ammunition triggered the lingering biotic effect around it.

The Marauder was struggling against the stasis, so she dropped it, running into cover in a doorway. Back against the steel, she leaned out and fired a quick burst into the Marauder, dropping its shields. It responded with a quick burst from its own rifle.

She dropped a Singularity on it. A roiling point of mass effect fields that lifted the Marauder into the air, tearing at him and smashing him against the wall as he flailed futilely. She fired another burst into him, then as he ceased twitching she knocked the thermal clip out of the gun, sliding a new one in, as she too slid out of cover.

She gave a small smile at the carnage. _See that Alice? I can fight just as well as ever. _

Liara realised suddenly that it might be best to turn on her communicator. Checking the map again as she did so, she noticed three red triangles moving towards her, and ducked back into cover behind a potted plant of some description.

It never ceased to amaze Liara just how durable most objects seemed to be. She'd crouched behind glass, behind walls, behind knocked down walls and pillars, and not one of them had proven to be – well, not bulletproof. Shepard had once done her best to explain it, something about how most of the places they fought were places that might expect an attack of some kind, so the materials that made the place had been designed to resist the attacks. Also something about how most guns weren't designed to damage cover, though with a piercing mod that could be changed. Then Shepard and Garrus had gotten into a debate about ceramic, though Liara wasn't sure how pottery affected a firefight.

_Focus! _Husks, human ones, bounded around the corner. As they did so, her communicator finally finished booting itself up, and at once her ears were filled with noise.

'-damnit there's some behind; Phalanx, take –'

'-shuttles, can we –'

'-pinned down in the lab with the swords, doing my best here but I don't –'

'-Banshee! Coming up right flank –'

Liara winced and tried to block the noise out. She launched a throw field at the husks, knocking them backwards. Unlike earlier versions, who simply disintegrated from the force, the husks of the Reaper War, these ones, while damaged, began to haul themselves back up. She drew her Scorpion and fired a single sticky explosive into the central husk. The ensuing detonation tore the other two apart. She stood from cover and began to check the map, moving back towards the others.

'Report!' Shepard's voice ripped through the confusion on the communicator. 'How's everyone holding up?'

'Shieldwall Team is holding – we're surrounded however, and would appreciate some assistance.' Kirrahe next.

'Ignore him, battlemaster – ten krogan could hold this all by themselves!' _Grunt. _

'This is Vega. I'm pinned down by something in one of the labs. I've got some grenades though, and plenty of ammo I snuck off the Normandy.'

'Nabree. I'm with the yahg. We're making good progress back towards the shuttle with the weapons we've retrieved.'

Liara cleared her throat cautiously. She didn't want to tell Shepard that she was on the other side of the building, because then Shepard's response would be equally predictable – run across to Liara's side of the building to see how she was. _And I __can__ take care of myself. _Then again, she also knew how important it was that she did check in. If Shepard didn't know where she was, then she'd also tear around the labs looking for her. 'This is Liara. I've encountered a few husks and dealt with them. I'm heading back towards the rest of Shadow Team.' _There. Both truthful, and vague enough that I don't have to – _

Something whistled past her ear, and she ducked behind one of the laboratory desks. _Pay attention! _She peered over the top of the desk as best as she could. Shepard was saying something about shuttles.

Something was standing in the doorway, some unfamiliar shape. It seemed humanoid – two legs, two arms, each the tell-tale fleshy grey of a husk. Some sort of crest on its head. A long silvery gun clutched in long tapering pointed fingers. A growling warble echoed from it as it moved into the room.

She could see it slightly better now. Its torso was concave like a Salarian's, tilted inwards. It wore armour, silvery black plates welded across its skin. A long twisting cloak fell from its shoulders. The legs, while initially jointed like those of an asari or a human then doubled back into the extra twist of turian legs, ending in the same broad two-toed foot. But its head was the most remarkable – a metal helmet enclosed it, removing all trace of what species it might have been before its fearful transformation. The front was sloping away from where its nose might have been, above two cavities for the brilliant blue lights of its eyes. A ridged metal crest rose from the helmet.

Its eyes met hers, and it raised its gun. She ducked back down again, _stupid T'Soni, it's just a new husk, and there you were staring at it as if it held the secrets of the universe. _A series of dull cracking noises, like someone snapping a datapad, and she found herself staring at the ends of bolts of red hot metal that had punched partway through the desk.

She stood, fired a shot from her Scorpion straight at it, but the grenade halted in midair as it collided with some form of kinetic barrier. It detonated, and she saw the thing's projected shield strength on her HUD drop slightly. A roiling ball of Warp had a greater effect, shattering it completely. _That means it was a biotic barrier – _

The force of the throw from the thing's outstretched hand smashed her barriers and knocked her backwards into another desk, slamming against her spine in a bar of red hot ache. She squashed the pain and pushed herself backwards behind it again.

_A new biotic husk. And it's my sort of luck to be facing it alone. _She readied her Hurricane and prepared to fire once again.

* * *

><p>The first husk Shepard met perished on impact with her first shot, a Mattock round smashing through its groin and into the floor behind it. The second died in the same way as it raced around the same corner, and the third too, though by then it was distracted by Tali's combat drone.<p>

Then they were followed up by a Brute, which clumped out and gave a loud bellow before it began to walk towards them.

The Mattock was tucked away in moments, the Graal springing into her hands as Shepard backpedalled. The orange lines lit up the sides indicating that she had in fact activated her Inferno ammunition earlier. Pulling down the trigger, letting its charge build up, she sent a signal to EDI to launch an incinerate tech-mine at it. The flames streaked past her shoulder as she finally released the trigger, letting the spikes burst from the barrel and impact on the Brute in a second burst of fire as it began to charge.

It never ceased to amaze her what a turn of speed Brutes could give. One moment it was several metres away, then, arm raised in the air it was almost on top of her, its vast claw hammering down towards her as she fired again. A wash of heat from the impact rolled over her.

The Brute was dead, but inertia carried its body onward into her. She gave a little hop backwards as her kinetic barriers collapsed under the force of the blow. 'Fuck!'

'You alright Shepard?' Tali's voice was concerned. Her shotgun boomed and Shepard heard the dying gibberish of a Marauder.

'I'm fine. Just remind me not to kill Brutes when they're right next to me.' Her shields were already regenerating, but it annoyed her that for a moment she'd still thought herself a vanguard, able to replenish her barrier by charging the foe and wrapping the mass effect field around her.

The Brute blocked the majority of the corridor, and Shepard gingerly began to climb over it. She could hear plenty more husks, though she couldn't see any, but there were many doors, even if a lot of them were closed. Husks couldn't open doors, requiring omnitools to access the holographic buttons one pressed to open the door. EDI was beside her, and with another booming shotgun blast Tali joined them, Chittika at her shoulder spitting a rocket back down the passageway. They advanced at a steady jog, guns at the ready.

'How far to the landing zone?'

'Quite some distance – we have explored much of the complex. Shieldwall are closest to their landing zone, but that is due to the nature of their deployment. If Ksano Nabree was correct in his assessment of his location, he is the next closest, along with the yahg. There appears to be some interference with squad location signals – I cannot confirm where all units are within the laboratories.'

Shepard checked her HUD. Normally it allowed her to monitor the rest of her squad's shields and health, as well as the weapon they were currently using. Now it only showed her Tali and EDI, all the others greyed out, with the words 'unable to access data' written over them.

_Even Liara. _But Shepard knew she was ok, she'd called in. _But what if something happens – she might not make it to the landing zone. I should probably try to find her..._

_Focus on the squad as a whole, Commander! Get them to safety, all of them. Liara can take care of herself. Sometimes. _

_I should probably try to find her. _

'I can't contact them except via comms. Tali, could this be fixed?'

'I could try and reroute the signal...but it would take a lot of time, and for everyone to turn off everything while I did. Which wouldn't be much help in the middle of a firefight.' A sudden shriek indicated the appearance of a Banshee from around the corner, and the conversation halted to deal with combat.

Shepard's Mattock was back in her hands – it was better for dealing with barriers than the Graal was. EDI's Hurricane was already peppering the Banshee with fire, and Tali's Claymore boomed and spat. The Banshee's estimated barrier strength flickered ever lower, but it was advancing, charging up the hallway in its strange stammering biotic charge, its shriek stuttering out of its mouth. Shepard's Mattock roared, a staccato blam-blam-blam that knocked aside the remainder of the barrier. She emptied the rest of the clip into its head, then ducked as a brilliant white ball of sparking biotic power passed through where she'd been a second before.

Her Cerberus Adrenaline Implant had kicked in, and now the Banshee's movements seemed slow, like it was stuck in a vial of honey. The rocket from Tali's drone sped past her oh so slowly as she reloaded, grabbing the used clip and keeping it in her belt for when it cooled down. As she did so, she noticed her right forearm, the weapon stuck there.

_Let's see how you do in combat. _Extending her arm to point at the Banshee, she triggered the Launch command on her HUD.

An impact whirring up her arm, sending it knocking back with the recoil of the thing's launch. With the burst of adrenaline she could see the thing rocket away, almost as fast as the bullets from her gun, blades extending as it span so quickly. The surge of adrenaline died away, and motion returned to its normal speed –

- as the Shruiken cut straight through the Banshee's neck in an explosion of armour and biotic ash and blood, ricocheting back through its collapsing head to hover next to Shepard.

Shepard had seen reports on Banshee armour. The stuff was hideously hard to penetrate, full of ablative shielding and superconductors to channel away energy. It was also several inches thick. It resisted piercing weapons and hammer blows equally well – in fact its only weaknesses had appeared to be fire and destructive biotics, such as warp. The Banshee's other weakness was that once the armour was pierced, whatever biotic mechanisms that fuelled it reversed, burning its body to ash in seconds.

Shruiken had just cut through this armour in a single blow. The only other weapons Shepard could think of that were capable of such a feat were heavily upgraded heavy sniper rifles and heavy weapons, such as the Cobra Missile launcher.

'Are you sure I can't have it Shepard?' Tali's voice was shocked.

'The edge must be nearly monatomic to cut through so quickly, likely with nanoscopic serrations to enhance cutting power when rotating.' EDI's voice was almost shocked too. 'Whatever technology they used to make this must have been nothing short of miraculous.'

Shepard eyed the rotating object. _So. A superpowerful weapon from ancient technology. _'Did the scientists have any idea what they were working from? Prothean tech, Reaper tech?' _I don't want another Crucible that's going to attack the husks until it decides we all should be them. _

'The files were mostly gone, targeted by the virus. But no, the scientists had ruled out those possibilities.'

_Shuttles now, weirdness later. I can go through this in debriefing once I've got everyone back safely. _'Ok. Let's get moving for now.' She tried to ignore the way the thing hovered after her as she jogged away. She put her hand to the com. 'Shieldwall, come in.'

'This is Kirrhae, we're holding steady. Urdnot Jarrod and four other Krogan have joined us – we are holding steady. No major injuries. Phalanx has suggested that we remain Oscar Mike to reduce casualties and deal as much damage as possible.'

Shepard brushed aside the brief surprise at hearing human radio terminology from a Salarian and replied. 'Yes, as long as you can hold the landing areas. Is there any chance of damage to the shuttles if you do this?'

'Yes, but there would be anyway – we've been using them for – '

The building shook suddenly, and Shepard staggered. Ahead of her a wall snapped in half like a styrofoam plate, gushing fire from a broken gas pipe. The floor cracked, and Shepard had a moment to think _Christ, not again, _before she fell through and landed with a crack on a lab table half crushed by the floor she'd been standing on. EDI and Tali tumbled down beside her.

'What the fuck was that?' Shepard belatedly realised she'd left her comm on.

'We have Reaper forces coming up through some sort of tunnel – Shieldwall is shifting position.' Kirrahe's voice was as clipped and fast as ever. 'Shepard, they have some sort of Reaper – ' A blaring noise, like the worlds loudest foghorn, echoed from her ear, then the communication shut off.

_A Reaper?_ 'EDI, is that possible?' She was already looking for the doorway out of here. _Looks like it's buried under the roof we just came in with. _

'It would have to be a smaller Reaper than any we've encountered. Even Destroyers are larger than this building.'

'Do we have any weapons that could damage it, at all?'

Tali suddenly jumped. 'Yes! Yes we do – I recognise this lab.' She dived off the rubble and ran to a wall where a huge gun lay, like a vast tube, with pipes running off it. The barrel looked strangely familiar...

Tali picked up the gun, then spun to face Shepard. 'It's a man-portable Thanix Cannon – like the one on the Normandy. It won't have many shots – maybe two six second bursts. But that might be just enough to knock down a Reaper's shields.'

'A man-portable Thanix Cannon? Wouldn't it be weaker?'

'Oh no, my scans indicate it's almost as good as the Normandy's main gun. The only issue will be aiming it. And carrying it. This is seriously heavy.'

'I'll take it.' Shepard reached out for it, only for Tali to pull away.

'No no no, this is my super-destructive toy. You've already got one of your own.'

'Shepard, in the mean time we need to leave this room.' EDI stepped off the rubble. 'The door is blocked. How are we going to get out?'

Shepard glanced up at the hole through which they'd fallen, trying to see if they could climb up and out. And spotted Shruiken, still hovering just above her despite everything, still spinning lazily in midair.

Then a plan shot into her mind, and she gave a wicked grin.

* * *

><p>Until the husks woke up, Kirrahe had been somewhat bored. He'd cleared all the entrances of husks, he'd cleared all the adjacent rooms, and he'd cleared much of the vast army outside. It had been slow, dull work – omni-blade, stab, omni-blade, stab, over and over again. The krogan had given up after only half an hour, despite an initial gleeful rush to stamp on the enemy. 'What's the point if they don't fight back?' Grunt had said. The biotic had given up soon after, saying that her 'kids needed to conserve their energy for when something interesting happens.'<p>

So that had left him and Phalanx, meticulously saving ammunition and killing husk after husk for two hours. Two hours of stabbing unmoving body after unmoving body. Waiting for the scans to confirm they were down, then moving on. He'd actually had to restock his omnitool's nanofabricator.

Then the first husk had twitched, and they'd all began to rise to their feet. He'd slammed into cover, Scorpion already firing, destroying the tightly packed front ranks as they rose. Phalanx's shots from his Widow had torn through the hostiles.

And then they came. All of them. All of the ones he'd seen outside as the shuttle came in, all of the ones inside they hadn't got round to killing. All of them.

The kakliosaur (he refused to call it Shepard) was invaluable. It tore through the husks in close combat, moved satchels of thermal clips back and forth, and even acted as mobile cover due to its natural durability and the heavy shield generator one of the krogan had installed in its back. Its support role was one of the best he'd seen since the invention of the supply pylon by the STG a year ago, and he had resolved to acquire and train several juvenile kakliosaurs himself.

The krogan however...he winced as he remembered Grunt leading a charge of krogan against a line of Brutes. Oh it had worked – barely. They were brilliant combatants, to be sure. And their weaponry, their ferocity. Almost all held either Striker rifles or some form of shotgun, and the lesser ranks were mown down beneath the punishing blows of their weapons, or their headbutts and charges. And they took incredible amounts of fire – especially the Sentinels, hurling Lift grenades like they were grain into serried ranks of husks that suddenly rose into the air and were blasted apart.

But they had no tactics. At least the biotics were more sensible, placing biotic barriers across vulnerable units who had lost their shielding, hurling biotic blasts of vast magnitude, that brought Banshees to their knees. Though they too were dangerously reckless, their leader hurling out shockwaves at close range as her Eviscerator roared.

They'd been holding. With the addition of the rest of Aralakh company, their leader brandishing some sort of omnitool generated shield, they'd actually driven the massed Reaper forces back.

At least, until the floor had split open under a red blast of energy and a vast black arm had pushed through the floor, releasing with it hundreds of husks. The building had shaken at the thing's entrance, and no wonder.

Kirrahe knew for certain it was some form of Reaper. Its weapon had told him that much – it looked like a laser despite being a mass effect weapon and completely obliterated two krogan. The black metal of its armour had told him that too. He'd never seen one under a hundred metres in height, but he was certain. He didn't know much else about it because as soon as it had begun to emerge, he'd ordered Shieldwall back, to form their mobile death squadron _now_. He'd had an M920 Cain when he'd come down, but he'd already used it. They had nothing else that could hope to damage a Reaper, even a small one. That landing zone was lost. They had to protect the others.

So they'd moved, him central, shifting from cover to cover beside Phalanx, surrounded by krogan. The kakliosaur had moved beside him, and the biotics had been formed up within the perimeter of Aralakh company as well.

Or at least, they would be once they were no longer under fire.

'You're certain?' he whispered to Phalanx.

'Kirrahe-Major, the trajectory of the shots as they impacted my shields indicates that the shooter is on the upper balcony, behind the glass. There is no-one on the upper balcony. Logic dictates that therefore there must be cloaked targets on the balcony.' Kirrahe wouldn't have thought it possible for a geth to sound tired and annoyed before today; he was proved wrong. _Fascinating. _

'Husks don't have cloaking tech, dumbass.' The biotic woman was crouched behind the same piece of cover as both him and Phalanx. 'There isn't even a shimmer.' The kakliosaur gave a snort that sounded like agreement from where it too was crouched.

'Then logic dictates – '

'Logic dictates you shut up.' She peered over the edge of the crate. Something impacted with her barriers with a thud, and she ducked back down. Sweat was beading at the edge of her hairline, and Kirrahe wondered once again how humans endured with such an inefficient cooling system.

Grunt peered round his cover opposite Kirrahe. Beside him crouched one of the biotic's pupils, _Rodriguez, I think they're called. _'Why are we hiding anyway? If they're a sniper, we should just charge them. Always works. I remember this time when – '

'It won't work,' Kirrahe hissed desperately. 'They'll see you coming. There's at least two – one to take out your shields with his first shot, the second to shoot you in the head. And before you suggest it, no, your sentinels won't do any better. We're out of grenade range, and Phalanx can't see them to shoot them. In fact, we can't even move away – they'll gun us down then as well. We can't use the omnishield program Jarrod gave us either – look what happened to him!'

'He only lost one heart.'

'And now he's lying out there pretending to be dead because if he so much as twitches he will be. Medigel can't bring back someone from their head being blown apart. Nor can krogan regeneration.' For a moment, Kirrahe wished for some vorcha, who could survive that sort of thing with barely a drop in cognitive function. _Well, barely a noticeable drop. _

'Kirrahe-Major, a suggestion. Is there any way to disable the stickyness of a Scorpion's rounds?'

'How – oh, I see.' And he did too. 'Are you sure you can get that accuracy?'

'Any damage to cloaking removes the cloak temporarily. Or at least, it should. Though given their silent weaponry, their cloaks may be immune too.'

'Wait.' Grunt's voice was a low growl. 'Why couldn't we do that with the Strikers?' Kirrahe was surprised – maybe he'd underestimated the krogan leader. Certainly he'd worked it out almost as fast as he had.

'Grunt-Battlemaster, the Striker rifle's explosion is not of enough radius to reach from the wall to the cover the hostiles are likely using. A bounced Scorpion round however, could.' Phalanx's eye flickered red. 'Activating Hunter mode to achieve greater accuracy.'

'I'm lost,' said the other biotic. 'What's going on?'

Kirrahe almost replied rudely, before realising that she'd been addressing the biotic woman.

'Look. Kirrahe's gun can launch the nades further than we can throw them – so flashlight here is going to use it to knock out the sniper-husks' cloaks, if they have them. Then we can see them, and kill them.'

He was still fiddling with said gun. The stickiness was simply due to mass effect fields, and the explosion too. The difficulty would be retaining one without losing the other. _Or rather the impossibility – one triggers the other...unless...a repelling field becoming an implosion. That could work. _

'If it bounced approximately a metre before it hit the wall, could you still get them?'

The geth's head flaps whirred. 'Yes. With seventy eight percent certainty. If we were Vakarian-General – '

The biotic woman gave a little groan. 'Shut the fuck up about Garrus and make the shot already! Shit.'

Phalanx took the pistol from Kirrahe. 'One moment.'

For a moment it sat there, crouched behind cover like the rest of them _though I doubt it has aching knees – something to investigate, can geth synthetic musculature be strained like organic? _The pistol rested in its hands.

Then it pivoted on its heels, gun held near vertical up the stairwell and fired twice.

Kirrahe had gotten an adrenal implant many years ago, and while it was old in comparison to some he'd seen, it still allowed him to view the world in what humans called 'bullet-time', able to track every shot if he so desired. The first projectile shot up, then as gravity took hold it began to arc down again. Whereupon its field struck the _second_ projectile, bouncing away from it over the lip of the balcony, up again as its field touched the floor, then off the wall and –

Detonation. Two shapes flickered into view, one with its gun trained on Phalanx's now visible head.

Kirrahe acted. He didn't even bother to consider the silhouettes. With one hand he shoved Phalanx down, with the other he grabbed the geth's rifle. Swinging it around one handed, he fired.

It was a one in a million shot for a soldier. For an STG operative with his training, it was closer to one in a hundred thousand.

For him, with his adrenal implant, it was still impressive, but not so much. The thing's chest blew backwards in a spray of machinery and viscera. The second was already disappearing, and so despite his broken arm, he raised his omnitool and fired off a Shield Drain tech mine.

By the time it took effect the second husk was long dead, riddled with shot after shot from the rest of Shieldwall.

It was then the pain hit him, and with a wince he realised he'd broken almost every bone in his right arm, along with some of the bones in his shoulder.

'Jesus fucking Christ. That was some fancy shit, frog-boy.' The biotic woman reached out to pat his shoulder, then realising it might be foolish, withdrew. 'You too, flashlight.'

'We have recorded these shots. We believe that the extranet will find it "fucking badass".' The geth gently removed his rifle from his hand. 'We also believe you require what Ksano Nabree would call "a fucktonne of medigel right now".'

Shakily, Kirrahe moved slightly, cradling his right arm to his chest. 'Do we have that to hand?'

'Got something just as good.' Grunt pushed Phalanx aside. 'Cryo-flamer thing. Should freeze your arm solid, keep it immobile while the more reasonable levels of medigel Shepard 2 carries patch you up.' Before Kirrahe could object, he'd fired it and his flamingly painful arm was suddenly fiercely cold. Grunt slathered it in medigel. 'Try not to get shot – it might shatter.' He gave a low laugh.

There was a roar from behind them as more husks appeared, but the rest of the team were dealing with it easily enough. Kirrahe stood, with difficulty. 'We need to investigate those new husks. And we need to keep moving – we haven't even made it to landing site two. Are our comms still down?' Already he was striding away towards the stairs, taking them two at a time. He hurt, but the first rule of STG was not to show pain. Actually, it was to not talk about the STG, but when he'd told humans that they'd tended to laugh.

When he reached the top of the stairs he stopped.

The husks' bodies were familiar. The horns, the body shape. Oh, the eyes had been removed, replaced with some vast sensor array that dominated the majority of the forehead.

'Holy shit, is that a salarian husk? I thought those didn't exist.'

'They don't. Now they do.' He looked closely at the weapons their arms had been built into. 'For now they go by codename Cyclops. If we get comms working again, warn the others. Remember, they're cloaked and have powerful, silenced and accurate weaponry.' He ducked as a stray Ravager blast shot past his head. _New husks. _He squashed the revulsion at the thought of it happening to his species. _Fascinating. _

* * *

><p>'I hate these new husks!' Vega pumped another three shots into one, whose barriers finally collapsed in a purple flicker after it finished its combat roll aside from his fire. 'I mean, biotics and explosives? Which genius Reaper thought that crap up? And heavy armour too.'<p>

He was having a bad mission. It had started with Lola confiscating his Carnifex, which he'd been pissed about, but at least she hadn't got his grenades. It had got a bit better, if a bit boring and creepy, when they'd been wandering through the deserted laboratory, and he'd found the Piranha. _which is my new best friend given how often it's already saved my ass. _He hurriedly ducked under another biotic field as it shot from the doorway, then spotting the Cannibals moving up behind him he opened fire on them too. The shotgun's rounds chewed through them and in seconds only scattered corpses were left.

_Then all the jodido pollacara husks woke up. _He'd been sitting around, admiring the Piranha when the first Cannibal had got to its feet. He'd knocked it back down again with a blast, but that was just the first. Limited by his new leg, his vision hindered by his missing left eye, he'd been fighting for his life.

And that had been before the new guys showed up.

They were right bastards, no doubt. Some sort of rapid fire batarian style gun that fired fucking half inch thick _bolts_ at about the same rate of fire as a Revenant. Thick armour. Then, of course, the biotics. Barriers, throws – he'd even had to dodge something that looked like a Reave. And they were fucking creepy looking too – like a stretched and distorted human, but with a weird crested helmet and a cloak on. Probably someone would end up calling them Centurions – _no wait, used by Cerberus. Legionaries? _But to him they'd always be _jodido bastardo. _

Also, they liked booby traps. He'd found that one out after moving out of one lab to hobble desperately to the next, where he'd triggered a whole bunch of spike launching proximity mines that had cut out his shields. Then, two of the bastards had blindfired at him from around a corner. He still had a bolt from that embedded in his upper arm. They loved grenades too – chucking the things every which way.

They were good tacticians too. They kept to cover when they could, barely peeking above it to fire. Flanking manoeuvres were done with subtlety – more subtlety than he'd thought husks capable of. A Cannibal's idea of subtlety was to wander out from cover and round your cover. These guys would lay down some covering fire, and suddenly some dude would be shooting at you from your right from behind some block several metres away.

'Fuck!' he cursed as a round blew straight through his shields. Ducking back down again, he waited for them to regenerate. _Otherwise I'll find myself flying across the room. _After he'd met the first few he'd reconfigured his shields to be biotic resistant – they weren't normally because he'd gotten used to the idea of there not being any biotics in the Reaper control other than Banshees. Now he'd have to – and biotic resistant shields, while preventing you from flying through the air with the greatest of ease, did much worse under sustained fire. _Something about the shape or the field – I don't really know, or care. _

He leaned up as his shields finished regenerating and fired another two shots into one's face. It went down with a roaring burble. But there were four others, and he was all out of frag grenades. He was just holding down the trigger on the Piranha now, spraying it at them to keep them in cover, which worked just fine till his gun gave a final boom and told him it was out of thermal clips.

Which was just the moment a Brute rounded the door.

'It's just not my day, is it?' Vega said, diving aside as the vast creature swung a claw down at him. He flicked his wrist, and his omniblade triggered, twisting out from his hand. _Come on, big guy. Let's do this. _

A whirring burst of blue suddenly shot over his head, streamers of it cutting deep into the brute, tearing it apart. The other husks too lasted only seconds as a vast shape in silvered armour strode in, Geth Spitfire pressed against its shoulder. 'Lieutenant, have you wounds?'

Vega stared up at Shade in amazement. 'Uh, no. But I'm all out of thermal clips, and since comms are down I don't have a clue what's going on.'

'Last time I am in communication with others became apparent that we to retreat to the area landed in. I was been fighting my way towards despite – difficulties.' Shade frowned. 'Haste has made my language skills decrease. I apologise.'

A group of Cannibals appeared in the doorway, and barely glancing at them Shade blew them apart. 'I must thank you for this weapon. It is – ah – good.'

'Yeah, thanks for saving me. You know what caused the building to shake earlier?' Vega had lost his footing and smacked his face on a desk. Thankfully the husks had done similar things.

'Some tunnel. More foes. Come. I will cover.' Shade poured another long streamer of fire into the doorway, and gestured behind himself at the corridor. Vega set off at a rapid hobble.

'Where are the other yahg?'

'Yassik is locating Shieldwall, and Tehruk is holding one of the landing areas.'

'Singlehandedly?'

Shade glanced round. 'Yes. He has acquired the weapon called Typhon.'

Vega frowned. Then his eyes widened as he remembered the light machine gun he'd seen while storming through the labs. 'He got anything else?'

'The Spitfire you gave him and the T-5V battlesuit strapped to his back.' A shriek from beyond Shade in the corridor. 'Ah. The husk called "Banshee", after the wailing spirit from human mythology, greatly feared as a foe of much prowess. We have dismissed this claim.' A rattle of fire from Shade's gun. 'Go, Lieutenant.'

Vega continued to limp down the corridor, trying to resist the urge to look round despite the noises of combat behind him. _Besides, it's my instinct to look over my left shoulder, and what I see then is nothing. Better to just keep on hobbling – shit! _As he rounded the corner he found himself face to face with a group of Cannibals and a Ravager who quickly opened fire. He quickly ducked through a doorway, sealing it behind him, glancing around to see if he could find thermal clips so he could fight the husks off.

Then he spotted something a bit better than thermal clips.

* * *

><p><em>Goddess, how many husks <em>_are__ there? _Liara felt as if she'd been fighting for hours. Duck behind cover, launch biotic attack, spray with bullets, repeat, over and over, moving through one bland featureless hall after the other, each one packed to the brim with Cannibals and Marauders and Ravagers and those new biotic husks. She hated all of them with a fiery fierceness she didn't know she was capable of for what were essentially puppets.

Her mouth was drier than a desert, rougher too, and her head ached with the constant toll she was taking on her biotics. One arm hung limp, huge hole in it plugged with medigel, purple blood staining her clothing. Her legs were cramped and aching from holding her in a crouch for so long. Every muscle ached.

_But I've held my own. I've fought on despite all this, and I've been __winning_. She gave the savage sort of grin she normally associated with Shepard, or large marine predators. She wished Shepard could see her now – then maybe she wouldn't be so stupid about protecting her. _I don't need it, see? _

In actuality, Liara knew she'd probably focus on her pained movements, the wound in her arm, and take it completely the wrong way, but it was a nice idea.

She leant against a wall for a moment, leaning out of the line of fire of the Ravager down the hallway. She reached out and twisted her hand, Warping it, feeling the mass effect field tear at the thick plates that made up its skin. She could also feel herself growing more weary, more tired by the second.

She almost missed the Cannibals trotting out beside the Ravager, only noticing in time enough to duck back behind the wall. She wished she'd remembered to bring the energy drinks human biotics used in combat to restore themselves after they'd overtaxed their abilities. Her head hurt so much...

_No matter. _A burst from her Hurricane. She was almost out of thermal clips now too. _Focus! _The Ravager collapsed into a pool of acid, but the Cannibals strode through it, seemingly unaffected, firing as they went, forcing her to duck back round and listen to the thudding sound as their bullets impacted with the wall.

_Enough! _She launched a Pull field from her hand as she leaned around to target them, lifting the three husks into the air, limbs flailing. One tried to target her, but Liara quickly shifted the nature of the mass effect field, turning it directly into a Warp.

The results were explosive, ripping the Cannibals apart and drenching her in the thick brown-black liquid that flowed through their veins instead of blood. She staggered on through their scattered limbs, breaking into a run, gun in hand as she rounded the corner. She checked her map – she was close to the Shadow landing zone now, almost at it. Only down this flight of stairs, along three more corridors and she'd be there, at the shuttle, and Shepard would be waiting for her.

Her footsteps clattered on the steps as she allowed gravity to pull her down. _You're not that tired T'Soni – you've been in longer fights than this. What about Ilos? _

_Ilos I wasn't all by myself fighting off half a building full of husks_ she snapped at herself. _And – _

A shriek echoed from below on the stairs.

'You're kidding,' she muttered.

A blue shape shimmered up from below, screaming all the while.

_A Banshee. Now? Why now? _She had almost made it. She was almost back with Shepard – could have shown her, but now she was going to die on a stairwell without being beside her again. She could take a Banshee at her best – but she wasn't. _Now I'm going to die. Now our child – _

Liara found new determination somewhere. New strength. Raising her Hurricane she unloaded a full thermal clip into the Banshee's head. _I'm NOT dying here. I am going to be with Shepard again, and our little blue babies too. Take that you stupid Reaper Ardat Yakshi thing! _She found her irrational anger growing, and slammed a Warp into the Banshee of such strength it staggered. Its barrier was gone, and still it came on, striding long steps up the stairs, teeth bared in a skull-grin. It was almost on her now, and she was still firing and Warping, and it was almost down, almost –

She felt herself begin to rise into the air. She couldn't move, couldn't raise her gun. She was face to face with it now, that horrible parody of her own face, one hand outstretched to hold her, the other drawn back, ready to strike. _I'm sorry Shepard. I'm sorry we won't be able to go to that distant place we thought of, some place where we can live in peace. I'm sorry there won't be any little blue babies. _The Banshee's arm swept forward, and Liara closed her eyes and waited for the blow.


	13. 12: Morningstar, Part Four

**Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect! I don't own Neal Asher! I only own a faulty USB stick! **

**A/N: ARGH. That was the sound my computer made when it ate my original USB stick with all my writing on it. I'm not kidding about the noise either. Then, to make matters worse, the summer ended and I had to do stuff that took up most of my early-morning writing time, like eating breakfast, and running around trying to catch buses. I apologise copiously for the long break, and for the fact that despite this chapter is the longest I've written yet it ****still**** doesn't finish the action scene. Thank you, all of you, for reading and reviewing and all the other wonderful things you've done during my hiatus. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and the rest of the fic. **

**Also, side-note. I'm ignoring Leviathan. That's right – ignoring it. I won't say anything, in case of spoilers, but I disagree with some of the concepts, both from a 'canon' perspective, and within my own fanon that I'm making up. If you want, I can post a coherent argument as to why on my profile, but unless people are really going to take umbrage over this I won't. **

**Chapter Twelve: Morningstar, Part Four**

They'd come through the wall like furies.

It'd been a pretty simple plan – use Shruiken to cut holes in walls, get EDI to boost the frag grenade's power output with the lab, then bring the wall down. Tali had helped by identifying the load-bearing points, and by suggesting that they just use the Thanix. However, EDI, after a moment of calculation, had said that the backwash of heat from using it in such an enclosed space would cook them all.

In the meantime, Shepard had had to work out how to get Shruiken to attack things without at her command, as opposed to it just doing it by itself. She had just aimed it at the Banshee and it had shot through and come back on some sort of VI autopilot – here she wanted something more precise. She felt certain it could do it. She just wasn't sure _how_ it could.

So she used her little technical skill to access what she figured was the Shruiken control module on her arm...only to discover it was just a glorified rail launcher. Carefully looking through the new programs installed on her omnitool was actually what was needed, though without any sort of guide she'd almost decapitated herself.

She simply needed to guide it with her mind.

It was breathtakingly simple once one got the hang of it – think, and the weapon sped towards the indicated location, spinning and moving as desired. A small camera could even be activated in her HUD, showing her what it 'saw', allowing it to be used as a scout, especially given that it had access to something similar to Geth's Hunter Mode. It had a certain freedom in interpretation – if you were to declare a lab table a hostile it would simply cut into it on autopilot, but if you wanted to aim for a particular spot, you just thought-aimed the weapon towards it.

In fact, practicing with Shruiken in many ways made up for the void Shepard could still feel in her tactics due to the lack of her biotics. _I mean, it's as close as I can get for now. Super powerful and guided by my brain, set patterns within which I can work, but also scope for originality. Very like biotics. _

So, after half an hour of work, and futilely trying communications which were obviously blocked, Shepard pressed the button on four souped up grenades, vaulted over a desk, and crouched on the ground waiting for the boom.

Then, the three of them exploded through the dust and rubble of the wall into roughly thirty Cannibals being escorted by ten Marauders and five...new husks. With strange helmeted faces, crests upon their heads, tapering pointed fingers, strangely powerful guns and –

- she rolled under another fucking pull, god, did these guys ever give up? It had been a relatively long time since Shepard had fought any biotic willing to risk using tactics that didn't work through shields – Tela Vasir had once or twice, but other than that she had to think back to the hunt for Saren, back before her death and before anti-biotic shielding and armour had been invented. Most biotic fields simply slid off the modified shield or ablative plates, with the exception of Warp, making it the most popular biotic attack in the last few years.

These new husks didn't seem to care.

A ratatat, and her shield strength dropped like a stone. Her Mattock was already at her shoulder, blasting through the smoke at the shapes in front of her. Shruiken sliced through yet another Marauder, cutting him in half and spinning on, slicing open the back bulge of a Cannibal. EDI's Phalanx roared, as did Tali's Claymore. Occasionally flames or the flicker of an overload would surge over the swarm of incoming hostiles.

_If I still could use my biotics, one good charge-nova would knock them all over – another maybe kill the Cannibals. _She squashed the thought, and fired a concussive round into a Cannibal, knocking it to the ground, then stamped fiercely on its head. Another new husk, gun firing – she launched herself into a combat roll across the uneven rubble, pushing herself up into its face, hand already coming back, omni-blade triggering and slamming into its face. It staggered backwards, but Shruiken was already there, slicing off its head. She wasn't controlling it now, not enough time – it was simply running on whatever the hell its auto-pilot actually was.

Suddenly a blue flash, something hitting her and Shepard felt herself rise off the ground, arms spinning to try and stay upright. _How the hell...? _Her shields had just recharged – there should have been no way a biotic could use a successful lift. She spun gently, view of the floor twisting to the stone and steel wall, ceiling, floor, husk, ceiling –

Her gun was already twisting round even as the rounds hammered into her shields. Her Mattock fired five times in rapid succession, the first going over the target's head, the second to its left, two slamming its barriers into nothing, and the last blowing clean out the back of its head. The field around her ended, and suddenly she slammed into the floor, breath knocked out of her and bruised.

_No time for that. _She kicked herself up to her feet. The smoke had cleared now, and she could clearly see the carnage they'd wrought. The husk's bodies lay thick underfoot in the corridor.

'EDI, Tali, those new husks can use biotics that can get through a shield, or round it. Be careful, and keep an eye out for them – make them priority targets, like Cerberus Engineers.' Shruiken was already buzzing back from the slaughter, dripping with liquid and pieces of flesh and bone. It hovered beside her, retracted its blades, and when it withdrew them they were clean again. She held up her arm like a falconer, and it flew to her wrist, sliding into place with a click. 'We need to move up to the landing area now we're out of there – if we encounter the Reaper, we hit it with the Thanix. But we do our best not to – we want to get out of here and bombard this place from orbit if possible.'

'It's the only way to be sure,' Tali said solemnly.

'I should never have shown you that vid.'

'Hey, do you think we'll find a small child named after an amphibian hiding in these labs? Who you can then adopt as your own?'

'Ah, stow it.' Shepard was becoming nervous, the haze of thoughts of the mission fading to be replaced by the worry she had felt before. _How can I care for a child during such a war? In fact, how can I care for a kid, period? I just...can't see myself doing it well_. Previously when she'd thought of being a parent she'd just seen children, her children, _well, playing. Not much else. _

But now she was thinking, of all the troubles that could beset her child. _What if people hurt her to get to me, or just hurt her? What if she gets hurt? I already tend to go a little crazy when my friends are hurt, and a whole lot of crazy when Liara is. What will happen with her? _

_And what if I don't? What if something's terribly wrong with me and I don't love my child, because Cerberus never expected me to have children and didn't properly repair that bit of my brain? What if I'm just incapable, too worried about her to really care for her? _

_And for that matter, where's Liara? _After the communications blackout she obviously hadn't been in touch, but Shepard was still concerned that something might have gone wrong. There were so many husks, and those new biotic ones too...

A flash from down the corridor ahead of them. Her shields flared suddenly, kinetic barriers crumpling and collapsing. EDI was already throwing herself to the ground with inhuman speed, gunshots peppering the hallway ahead of them. Tali was crouching into cover, and Shepard realised she'd triggered her Adrenaline module again. Certainly she could now see the second projectile, hurtling towards her, and despite her reflexes she wasn't quite going to get out of the way in time.

She took the impact to the shoulder, letting it pulverise the flesh there. Already the numbing soothing flow of medigel was reaching to plug the gap, the armour self repair system beginning to seal the hole. Her Black Widow was in her hands, scope coming up to her eye as she pushed herself down to the ground. Her shoulder screamed in protest from the movement, but she ignored it.

Obviously whatever had shot at her was cloaked, which either meant some form of betrayal, or cloaked husks. _So the new ones have several tricks up their sleeves. _While the uniform colour of the hallway prevented her from spotting the tell tale shimmer of the Chamelon systems of cloaking, the thermal and ultra-violet imager on the scope of her Sniper Rifle should easily expose them.

_Or not. _The hallway through the scope still seemed blank and empty. As the adrenaline burst wore off, a third shot echoed from down the hallway. The low burbles of noise that had been in the background resolved into speech from EDI and Tali, Tali's mostly being very fast swearing, some of it too fast for the translator to catch.

'- no sign of enemies – my shots are not connecting with anything, though so far ten of them have disappeared.' EDI's omnitool lit up as she launched an incinerate tech-mine.

Shepard scanned the corridor again, rolling aside from a fourth shot. Her shoulder was itching underneath the layer of medigel, meaning it had begun to heal up. 'Tali, could Chittika give us a hand here?' She launched Shruiken out from her wrist, hoping that its scanners could pick up something she couldn't. No such luck – the small view in her HUD that was from its point of view showed nothing other than the corridor as it rocketed backwards and forwards at her command, trying to hit whatever was there.

A flicker, and for half a second something seemed to appear, a thin horned grey shape. It disappeared, but an arm remained, falling to the ground and leaking fluid as Shruiken continued to rocket back and forth. _Horns...Salarian? Definitely a husk though, and not one of the new ones we fought previously..._

Her thoughts were interrupted as her shields shattered again under another shot. Swearing, she pulled herself into cover behind one of the absurd potted plants that lined the hallways of the laboratory. The shots were silent – almost a feat on its own. It was almost impossible to silence mass effect powered weapons, though there had been attempts. Something about the kinetic surge cancelling any attempt at muffling. _Then again, this is Reaper tech. _

Shruiken had buzzed back around and cut towards where Shepard was certain the husk was. Again, a flicker, Shruiken disappearing from view, then a thin grey figure appeared, sliced neatly in two. Shepard covered it for a couple of seconds with her Mattock, before moving up to look at the husk.

It definitely was based on a salarian, unlike the biotic one. It had the horns – the whole damn body shape, in fact. The only difference was the vast eye in the centre of its forehead and the exposed bones in the arms.

And of course the vast rifle wired into said arms. Long and sleek, it looked alarmingly like a Geth Javelin, except in black, and with various seemingly extraneous spines.

'I thought there weren't Salarian husks?' Tali peered down at the body. 'I mean, shouldn't we have seen them earlier?'

'The signal blocker likely caused the Reapers to readjust their strategies and send out new troops to test. Of course, they would have lost contact with them due to the signal blocker. Now however, they can see their effectiveness, or lack thereof, and choose to continue to make them or not.' EDI too leant over to look at the husk.

'Could these new troops include this mini Reaper Kirrahe said he saw?' Shepard poked the rifle with a boot. It was a large bore, with a huge, almost fluted, barrel stuck on the end. The wires were blue, and examination indicated that they were filled with liquid – _probably some sort of coolant. The husk's whole body is the thermal clip...it probably uses the heat from each shot to power the more advanced cloaking device or maybe its shields._

Shruiken suddenly whizzed past her head and cut an onrushing husk in half. The corridor seemed suddenly full of them as they burst out from round corners – mainly Marauders and Cannibals, but a sudden instant drop in EDI's shield strength showed that the new salarian husks were out there too.

Then there was a blue rippling and bodies flew, and a pink shape stormed into view, blades glistening silver on his armour. Ksano's submachine gun stuttered out a burst that tore away the side of a Marauder's face, then turning he punched a Cannibal, fist and omnitool aglow. The husk's head collapsed, spraying shards of bone and brain.

There was another roar and a squat red figure barrelled around the corner, a curving sleek shape held in its hands. The gun roared and a single brilliant blue burst slammed into a patch of air that collapsed, revealing the salarian husk that had stood there. The yahg swung its arm around, knocking aside husks like they were bowling pins.

Shepard grinned, and fired into the crowd with her Mattock, rounds punching through one husk to impact against the next. 'Thank you, cavalry!'

'Merely completing the mission, Commander.' The batarian's omnitool glowed and something shot from it, a wide cone of blades that embedded themselves in the husks before them. 'Extraction has been moved to point two. I and Yassik were sent to retrieve you.' His barriers flared as a shot impacted them.

'Commander, tribe leader. Assist.' The yahg blocked a clumsy blow from a Cannibal with its silvered arm, before grabbing the husk's arm and ripping it off. A swift kick to the thing's chest sent it flying away into the crowd.

'Ok people, let's move!' Forming a line beside Shepard, the five of them opened up into the crowd, husks collapsing before they could even get close. They slowly strode backward, covering each other and moving towards extraction.

* * *

><p><em>Don't give up, ever. <em>It wasn't quite an official family motto, but it was as damn close as it got within the T'Soni family. Certainly it was a catchphrase, something her mother had repeated to her over and over in her childhood, something that had kept her going through her archaeological degree and her graduate studies, and something that had kept her alive in the last few hectic years.

Thus, when the Banshee drew back its arm, Liara did too, and brought hers forward pulsing with biotic power.

The biotic punch was an incredibly simple idea in theory – playing with mass effect fields around one's own body, one could massively increase the force of the punch, much like happened in a gun to give the bullet its force. In practice it was a little more challenging, especially when one was sticking a rolling ball of mass effect fields on the end of that punch to add a little more oomph to it.

The Warp ignited the Banshee's barriers, shattering what was left of them. The punch knocked it backwards, causing it to lose its concentration on the mass effect field holding her, letting her fall to the ground. She landed awkwardly, on her bad shoulder, and suppressed a gasp of pain. _Get up, GET UP. _She stumbled to her feet, gun raised and pulled the trigger.

The sharp bleep from the gun told her all she needed to know.

The Banshee shrieked, drawing back its arms to strike her, and she stumbled backwards, barely dodging the blow. Her head was a nightmarish prison, her skull three sizes too small, her mouth a vast endless burning plain, a desert, no, the surface of a star. Her hands frantically searched for thermal clips across belt around her waist, and brushed across empty holders.

'Shit.' She backpedalled, dodging another lunging strike from the husk. It was almost dead, body battered, but still it strode towards her, implacable and shrieking.

'Shit.' She couldn't use biotics, she'd likely give herself a brain haemorrhage. Her omnitool didn't have the capacity to make an omni-blade. She skipped backwards again, hand moving to her Phalanx and drawing that, hoping that it still had a thermal clip in it. She pulled the trigger three times.

A boom, and the Banshee staggered in its long stride. Another, and a pulse of light shot past it. On the third pull an echoing beep rang from the gun.

The Banshee still wasn't dead.

'Shit!' She turned and ran, just avoiding another clawstroke as it swung towards her.

It shrieked, gathering biotic energy around it and outwards in a sphere of force that caught her in the back, eating away at her shields and barrier. She stumbled, and kept on running, legs aching, breath short.

A door on her left – she activated it and dived through, virtually crashing into a set of armour. It wobbled, gloves tumbling out of suspensors and to the ground, but she was already scanning the walls, searching for something, anything she could use as a weapon.

She didn't have to look far.

Recently, her memories of swords were somewhat marred by Cerberus, both by Kai Leng and by the Phantoms. But swords, or at least something similar, were a very large part of Asari culture. Back before the government of Thessia had been unified, the predecessors of the Justicars had roamed the land with bladed weapons not dissimilar to them. They fought solely with these and with their biotics, knights free from any control, only holding to the high moral code that they had developed themselves. As technology progressed, the swords were eventually discarded, but several Asari still studied and learnt how to master a blade.

It had been a small club at university, many years ago now, and she hadn't been the best at it then. But she still remembered how to hold a blade, how to strike with one, how to block. Her fingers closed around the hilt of the gently curved sword as she lifted it from the stand.

The Banshee was already at the doorway. It strode towards her. Its mouth opened in a piercing shriek that echoed inside her already burning head, turning the deep low throb of pain into a sharp spike of agony. It raised its hand to launch its biotics at her.

She spun, cutting down as she did so. The blade stopped for a moment against its hard grey skin, then sliced through its body as easily as if it were paper. It collapsed, burning up as its own energy consumed it, its shriek impotent, already dying away.

Liara gave herself a moment, leaning against the desk. Her altercation had likely drawn more attention from the husks, and she probably couldn't deal with many more. Her biotics were still overtaxed, and she still didn't have any ammunition.

_But I do have a sword. _Carefully, she moved out of the lab, blade in hand.

* * *

><p>Blam.<p>

He removed the weapon from under opponent's destroyed throat, spun, launched a kick into a smaller one. Blade flashing, he carved down through their open blue mouths, splitting their worn flesh. Fired off one of the rockets within the weapon on his arm – watched as the metallic gibbering creature with an upraised arm is turned into fine paste. Brought the ga'tharn'ikta up once more into ready position, then down and around, using his other hand to guide it through and attack that knocked aside those around him.

Bahranik didn't think he'd ever had so much fun. He wasn't like Yassik, obsessed with status, or Tehruk, foolish idealist. He wasn't like Paryatanik either, so in love with the idea of knowledge as power that he failed to see the honourable solution.

No, he loved the fight. Every single twisting second of it. He'd been bred for it, and while he'd fought many many battles in Paryatanik's name, they had been more like raids. Launching surprise attacks on foes who felt they had better equipment but didn't eventually had lost something of its appeal, despite the initial rush.

And they had been so damned short too. He and his brother would engage the guards while the others grabbed whatever piece of technology they'd been looking for from the tribe, and then they'd flee into the night.

This? He'd been fighting non-stop almost since the bodies began to move. And none of this 'combined arms' nonsense he'd been forced to use back at his home. No need to crouch behind some rock because some other idiot was, to not feel the savage thrill of blood on claw. He'd deliberately taken weapons from the aliens that allowed him to fight in the way of his tribe. Ga'tharn'ikta in hand, and rockets on the other arm.

A roar alerted him to the presence of another one of the large armoured enemies. He fired another shrieking rocket at it, already rolling aside from a burst of red fire launched by one of the insect-things. His legs pushed him down out of his roll, up and towards the wall, hands changing grip on the ga'tharn'ikta's pole. He hit the wall feet first and pushed up and off, spinning as he did so, raising his weapon over his head.

He would not deny it, Paryatanik was a brilliant engineer. One of the first things Bahranik had seen him do was to take his old ga'tharn'ikta and turn into a weapon of singular majesty. He'd strengthened the haft and grip, changed the shape of the end spike to give more fearful wounds, and had added something to the blade that made it vibrate at high speeds. All Bahranik had needed to know was that it could cut through almost any armour any tribe possessed back home.

The blade stabbed down, cutting deep into the armoured creature's narrow neck. Bahranik was already swinging around onto its back, shoving his right arm against its skin and unloading the weapon called Claymore attached to his wrist. Paryatanik had shown him how to link this weapon to the omnitool the aliens had installed, and now with but a thought he fired, hearing the satisfying boom of its blast.

He was already in motion again, not stopping to watch the foe fall. Charging, nimbly dodging shrieking alien shapes who tried to grab hold of his legs, he powered towards the insect thing. Lines of blue through the air traced to him – _like the laser sights on several tribes' weapons in our home_, and roaring pulses of red fire launched themselves towards him.

Bahranik had already rolled under them, curled into a ball around his ga'tharn'ikta, weapon blade protruding from his left hand side and cutting foes asunder as he span. He rolled to his feet once again, but by then it was too late to simply land a blow on the insect-beast; instead he hit it with the full force of his massively heavy and strong body. The disc on the front of it bent inwards with a crunch, and with a shriek it began to dissolve into green liquid which he nimbly sidestepped. He'd already discovered what it could do.

Out the doorway, into the corridor, flicking the thermal clip out of the Claymore, sliding another in. Just in time, a spiky-headed-metal alien stepped into his path – he lowered his right arm and fired, the thing's head dissolving into a fine spray of brain and bone. A quick roll evaded another red blast from the insect-acid enemies, another rocket and a charge and it was dead too.

He hadn't seen much of the others since he'd started this battle. Paryatanik had wandered off – something about finding the aliens. Tehruk and Yassik had obeyed, slaves that they were. He'd briefly seen the group called 'Shieldwall', as they raced below him, a moving machine of death, but they hadn't seen him. He almost respected their efficiency – of course it was nothing in comparison to his, as they required large numbers to hand out the same destruction, but it was impressive, nevertheless.

Round a corner, and into a group of the human-like ones. They tried to seize him, obviously not intelligent enough to realise that with a sweep of his arm he could shatter their flesh, that their strength was nothing in his comparison to his.

He gave a roar, switched his ga'tharn'ikta to one hand, sliced, kicked, grabbed one and used it to beat another into the ground. A gibber – a spiky headed one approached, gun chattering, the little blue flickers around him indicating that the shields he had been given were failing.

Shields. What a misleading term. For yahg, shields were weapons of attack and defence, a mighty bulwark that required great skill. As far as Bahranik could tell, all these required were batteries. He had not been happy with the idea of them. Paryatanik had done an extranet search however, and come up with a solution of sorts.

With a flick of his omnitool, Bahranik triggered the detonation of his shields. The human-shaped foes crumpled, the spiked one staggered, but only for an instant as Bahranik's powerful fist drove through his body. He shook it off, blackened machinery and internal organs spilling from the wound.

'Still a brutal as ever.'

Bahranik, turned, inclined his head. 'It is my skill, just as yours is your precious knowledge.'

Paryatanik nodded. 'It is why I let you serve me.' A garbled noise in the corridor behind, and he turned, fired a pulsing stream of blue lights round the corner. 'We must get to the extraction area.'

Bahranik inclined his head. In truth, as much as he wanted to believe it wasn't, he would not ever rise against Paryatanik. Not out of any loyalty, for there was none, but merely because he knew he would lose. In a straight fight, he would win, for that was where his mind lay, but Paryatanik never, ever played fair. There would be no straight fight, merely the endless war against an unseen enemy who would destroy him in every way, piece by piece. In the end, despite their differences, it would not be worth it. Maybe one day Paryatanik would slip, but until then...

'I obey, leader.' He fed another thermal clip into the shotgun, moved up beside Paryatanik. 'This weapon is somewhat inefficient.'

'It is powerful, which is what you wanted. Personally, I would have set up a belt fed system to feed into it, but this did not occur to me until we had already left, and in many ways it is too clever. Commander would have noticed.'

'What arrogance these aliens have, to name one of their own as leader from birth.' Bahranik fired the Claymore at the first shape that appeared at them. It collapsed.

'It is not her name. Sufficient searches of the extranet have shown that we misunderstood the system when we first arrived – Commander is her _title. _She is of the tribe Shepard, with her name as Alice. It appears to be the custom among the aliens to address each other by tribe name in formal circumstances, one's own name being more personal than it is among us.'

'Bizarre.' They clattered down a flight of stairs, knocking foes aside as they ran.

'To us. It is, as ever, a matter of perspective. However, if it were here name it would be appropriate. She is a good leader. Few have died under her, and there are even fewer engagements she has lost.'

'She is an alien.'

'I am not saying she is worthy of survival, Ranikhressen. I am saying that she is a dangerous foe. You are, as ever, impatient. Very soon, they will be able to understand every word we say, even within our own tongue. They have machines capable of decoding any cipher we can come up with. We must all play our part, and I do not want it to be one that ends in failure because of you. You must _control yourself_, or I will make you wish that your end was your brother's. Do you understand me?' Paryatanik's purple-black face was only inches away from his own, eyes matching his, a challenge.

He flicked his ears in assent.

'Good.' Paryatanik fired a long burst, clearing the foes aside. 'Then act like it.'

With a growl, Bahranik followed. _And some day you too will slip, and then __I__ will make you wish that you had failed here to these soft pathetic aliens. _

* * *

><p>'Stein! I'd better not see that barrier flicker again or I'll shove a warp so far up your ass your breath will taste of gravity fields! Dean! You were meant to be directing that last blast, what the shit went wrong? No, don't tell me, I don't care, deal with it. Prangley, how're we doing on energy drinks?'<p>

'Ten bottles left.'

'Right, we're on rations then. I'll direct from now on, you guys provide the juice. We ready?'

'Yes sir!'

She still couldn't get used to that. To her, sir was what you called a bad guy. An asshole. It was a sign of servility, and she'd never done it unless threatened with imminent death, and even then reluctantly.

So to hear her kids chorus it at her – well, it was weird. For one thing, she was in authority, she liked that, she liked that they knew that and worked well with it. On the other hand, she kept on getting uneasy and feeling like maybe she was all those things she'd hated.

_Philosophising later, Jack. Biotics now. _

Biotic Artillery was an idea that she was very proud of, containing as it did insane levels of destruction. It also required insane levels of concentration, something she was less good at, but hey ho. With Minoru gone she was the best of her squad at guiding the damn thing, merely through practice. And, well, she dealt with the power a little better.

The thing with the principle was it required power sharing, which was really difficult if you were human. In order to get everyone doing exactly the same thing, at exactly the same time, in exactly the right way, one had to – well, put all ones power into not doing much of anything with their biotics. Then, theoretically, the guide could simply shape all of the loose mass effect fields lying around into the attack, and launch it. One joint powered biotic attack.

Except in practice it was fucking impossible. Manipulating that many different fields, even if people were just creating them and not controlling them at all, required a strength of biotics that only she could really pull off. And what if she was shot, or knocked out? Well, then their biggest gun would be out too. She'd gone to the Alliance with the problem, who'd gone to the asari, who'd talked to the Salarians, who'd come up with a solution.

Of sorts.

'Ok, everyone link up!'

The squad's omnitools flashed, and suddenly she could feel her kids, not just outside in terms of their mass, their barriers, but inside them too, hear the whispery electricity of their thoughts, their pain, their exhaustion. They were one now, her squad, one being with her at their head.

_Cause that's how this works. Omnitools link into the nervous system – link omnitools and you can theoretically link entire minds, just like the asari. And once you've linked a whole bunch of biotics together, well..._

_Care to stop woolgathering and get on with it, boss? _Prangley's mind snapped.

Jack grinned, and activated her kids biotics. All seven of them blazed blue, shimmering fields massing above them. She shaped it carefully, held it, then pushed her own floodgates open, watching and feeling the attack shape into enormity. _A slam this time I think..._

She released it.

The husks in front of them in a vast circle began to rise from the ground. Even those whose armour would protect them from biotic attacks did, because Jack wasn't putting the field around them – she was putting it around the area. _The tech just stops direct biotic attacks, not attacking the area around it. The edges of the field are too far away to slide off the thing. Damn Alliance shitwits __still__ haven't figured that out – and it looks like the Reapers haven't either. _Brutes, Husks, Cannibals, more, they all rose into the air. For a second they hung there, perfectly exposed to the weapons fire that raked across them.

Then she slammed the lot back into the ground.

The resulting explosion from over a hundred bodies hitting the ground at just subsonic was enough to take out several more around. Body parts flew, some chunks of armour from the Brutes being enough to decapitate a Banshee. In short, she'd turned the husks into a fucking micro artillery shell.

_It's a good technique. I'll try it again next time, but now..._

'Energy drinks!' The link had collapsed as soon as they'd launched – that was how it worked. 'Individual for now, we don't want to waste our energy. Stein, how's the barrier going?'

The blue dome that encircled them flickered under the constant onslaught. 'Holding – just – '

'Mancha, take over.' Victor nodded, then extended his hands, and the barrier renewed itself. Stein collapsed, blonde hair flicking across his face. With a heave, Jack pulled him up and leant him against their cover.

'Where the hell is Shepard?' Prangley fired a burst from her Avenger.

_Now that is a good question. _

They'd fought their way to the second shuttle, her and the kids smashing things, Kirrahe and the geth guy sniping them, and Grunt and company...doing more smashing, as well as acting as shields.

When they'd arrived, they'd found a tall green angry looking thing with eight eyes that apparently was a yahg. It had been shooting the husks with an absolute bastard of a machine gun, and only had a couple of scratches on it in comparison to its hideous kill count. _Note to self – do not fuck with these guys. _They'd all lined up around the shuttle, the husks around them, and begun to wait for the last few guys – Shepard's squad, Liara, the other yahg and Ksano – to show up.

And waited.

And waited.

Jack picked up her Widow from her bag. She wasn't really into snipers, but what the hell, it was big and loud, and that was good enough for her. Sighting along it, she peered over the wall she'd been behind.

Husks stretched for miles in a dense crowd. Their numbers were being thinned – by blue grenades, roaring laughter and a constant stream of fire and explosions – but every second more poured up from the vast mass that stretched into the distance. She wasn't even looking at the facility behind her.

_At least they're close enough together that almost anything with an area of effect fucks up a tonne of them. _She gestured with one tired hand and a Field Reave pulled up over a group of Cannibals. Seconds later it detonated as Prangley hurled a throw at it, tossing the Cannibals apart, and sending other husks flying. She fired, the shot going straight through the Marauder she'd aimed at, punching through the husk behind him, then smashing into one of those sneaky invisible salarian dudes and pulverising him.

She flared blue and began to rise into the air, but a quick warp to the air around her detonated the biotic husk's field. She couldn't spot the asshat, but since it didn't happen again she had to assume someone had got him. _Well, when I said the Reapers hadn't figured out anti-biotics – heh, antibiotics, good one – obviously they worked it out in time to make those guys. When will they stop coming up with new shit? _

'How much longer can we hold out, Miss?' Molly was the youngest of the lot of them, and still tended to think of Jack as a teacher, a thought almost as weird as Jack as a sir. She was also very very good at precision biotics – not a lot of juice though. She looked grey and exhausted, and her hands shook slightly. _Burnout...damnit. If we push her much more her she'll start bleeding out of her brain. She knows it too. Good kid – better than me. Knows her limits. _

'As long as we need to. Get some rest, have some more energy drinks. Try not to get shot or anything. I'm going to go talk to Kirrahe, see what the guy thinks.' _Because I'm not going to lose anyone else. What the hell is taking them so long? _

She crawl shuffled along the wall, out of the biotic field barrier Mancha was holding up, then rolled across the gap. For a breath second the world spun, and she felt a hail of shots slam into her barrier, then she was across and under the supply barrier that Kirrahe had set up. _STG has some fancy toys...man-portable kinetic shield bubble? _She'd poked it too, testing how good it was – the fucking thing could probably slow her down.

Beneath it stood fifteen krogan and a kakliosaur, along with a geth, a yahg and a salarian. It honestly looked like something out of a bad vid. Almost all the krogan were shooting away from the facility, into the horde on that side. A couple guarded their backs, ensuring that the husks spilling from the Morningstar Research labs didn't assfuck them.

'How much longer do you think it will take?' she shouted. Her hair had gotten out of its damn ponytail and into her eyes during that last roll, and once again she wondered why she'd let it grow out. _At least when I was bald I didn't get pissed off at my own hair. _

Kirrahe looked round at her. He too looked a little worn around the edges, but that might have just been because of his arm. 'As long as it needs to.' He fired over his shoulder into the crowd. _Not much point in aiming, I guess. _

'Care to cut the bullshit and give us an estimate?'

'A minute.' Kirrahe was now looking towards the facility, rather than away from it.

Jack looked too.

There appeared to be some sort of mincing machine stuck inside the husks there, because body parts were flying left right and centre. Other husks were on fire, or spinning away in pulses of blue plasma or shockwaves. And through it all, sliding over walls like a pro, came Commander Girlscout Shepard, with the quarian and the sexbot at her heels. And Ksano and some other yahg bringing up the rear.

_Fuck yeah! _

Shepard vaulted down beside them. 'How are we doing?' Something silvery flashed overhead and sliced into the husks beyond.

'Same as always, battlemaster.' Grunt was grinning. 'Just the large human, the other two yahg and the asari and we're done.'

_And the award for tactlessness goes to the krogan! Fuckin' idiot, Shepard's crazy about the blue bitch. Watch, she's going to run off and try and find her. _Certainly, Shepard was starting to get to her feet again from the crouch she'd been in. Tali was now beside them, some massive contraption on her back, shotgun cradled in her arms and booming away at the crowd. EDI too was there, shooting tech mines, overloads, decoys, whatever random tech shit she could make. Ksano had arrived a little further away, but he was joining in as well.

'I should probably make sure –' Whatever Shepard was about to say was cut off as a pair of blue beams struck the shield. It whirred, popped, and died.

'Praetorians!' Grunt shouted.

_Praetorians? As in, plural? _Jack turned, and almost instantly ducked as a vast grey shape landed in front of them in an explosion of biotic energy. Its blue eyes fixed on her, and its mouth opened, revealing the rows of dead human heads that were much of its construction.

Her Eviscerator was in her hands, body glowing blue as she drew on her last reserves. Warp, fire, roll away, come up, warp again, fire. The thing was glowing, about to start doing its pulsing melee thing that had almost killed her back on Horizon. _I hate HATE these things! _

On the other hand, on Horizon she hadn't had as much back up as this. Grunt was charging the fucking thing, head lowered, arm pumping, the geth dude was firing as fast as he could, and all the krogan were turning their guns on it. Everyone's fire, for a few brief seconds, was directed on the one husk. Explosions burst across its surface, its thick armour cracking as the rounds tore through it.

It melted apart into ash in seconds, its death screech echoing. But already, beams of brilliant blue light were smashing down into their lines, kinetic barriers flickering under the assault.

'I've got to get back to my kids.' She could see a pair of praetorians bearing down on them. Warps and gunfire smashed into them, but the damn things were tough, and getting closer. _And there's all the other husks still out there as well. _

'Ok.' Shepard looked round at Tali. 'We need these husks cleared away – a long way away. I know we were going to save it but –'

'You're serious?' Jack could virtually hear the quarian's grin. 'I've been wanting to use this baby since I picked it up. Garrus is going to throw a hissy fit when he finds out _I_ got the massive cannon.' She reached up and pulled the huge thing off her back. 'I am going to need to brace this thing though.'

'What is that?' Kirrahe eyed the thing for a second, before a praetorian's attack forced him to refocus his attention on the fight.

'Something that will buy us some time.' Shepard raised her Mattock and snapped off a clip's worth of shots in under a second. _She always was fucking fast with that thing. _'Ok, everyone focus fire on the praetorians. When I say duck, duck, because otherwise you're going to be dead. Jack, go back, help your squad.'

Jack nodded, and ran, ducking out from under the blue bubble of the shield and across and into the flickering blue of the over barrier Mancha was still holding up. A praetorian was almost on it, and with a roar Jack fully triggered her biotics, slamming a warp that could've taken apart a shuttle into the praetorian's armoured body. It staggered back, projected armour strength leaching away in her HUD. A roar of her shotgun and it was ash.

She slid into cover next to Prangley. 'How're we doing?'

'Same as always.'

'Fuck. Well, Shepard's back. When she says duck, you hit the floor, ok? That goes for all of you. Victor, for fuck's sake sit down and let me take over the barrier. Hit the bastard flying things, ignore everything else, and don't die.' She raised her hands and blue force washed from them rippling round into a familiar hemisphere around her and her kids.

_Just like the Collector base. Except, you know, instead of ten billion angry death bugs I've got to keep out several million shots. You know what Shepard, fuck you. Fuck you for giving me a conscience. I mean, when I was younger I wouldn't have given a shit about these guys so fuck you. _Already she could feel the energy slipping from her and into the shield. _Then again...there are some advantages. _She thought of the way they obeyed her, the way she could teach them to be strong.

Then the praetorian opened fire again.

It was like she'd run a marathon in ten seconds. Suddenly her skin was drenched in sweat, her breath short, her muscles aching. The back of her head felt like someone was stabbing it with an omniblade. _I seem to be back at 'Shepard, fuck you.' _

A hand on her shoulder. 'Miss – '

'Just shoot the fucking thing.' It wasn't even a command she was so weary. _You can do it Jack. You're the strongest human biotic. Ever. Cerberus did that to you, and the Reapers turned out to control Cerberus. So. These guys here are the bastards responsible for you being a fucked up crazy bitch. You gonna let them through? Hell no! _'Could I get an energy drink, or is that too much to ask?' She poured more strength into the barrier. _Get through that you cocksucker. _The other husks were almost on it as well, almost under the praetorian's feet.

'Duck!' A distant cry, and Jack bent over to find she was already sitting down and it wasn't really necessary.

Then a brilliant blue beam swept across the husks. It wasn't hindered by them, smashing them to ash and moving on to the next, kilometres back. It passed so close to her she could feel the unendurable heat of it, especially as it collapsed her barrier into shreds. The praetorian was too low, was caught by it. For a moment there was simply a hole punched through it, then it burst apart into nothingness. The beam swept back and forth once, then stopped.

_The fuck was that? _But the others were all cheering, and she could see why. The vast horde of husks that had been advancing was now little more than a line in the distance. Its front had been shattered, turned to ash. Two praetorians had been caught by it, the rest too high, but the thing had smashed Banshees, Brutes, Ravagers, all of it like it was nothing.

Then the praetorians swooped down again.

* * *

><p>Liara was not a fool. She knew very well that when the husks within the laboratories woke, those vast hills of them outside would have too. So, before she went outside, she carefully checked the situation, probing with cautious and weak mass effect fields to get the lay of the land.<p>

And was promptly surprised when a massive, ship-class mass effect field suddenly appeared and swept across her vision, smashing her biotic probes aside. Peering round the doorway she could see a burnt landscape of ash, and many cheering people, and several strange flying insectoid husks. _Obviously one of the weapons from the lab destroyed a lot of the husks. Wait...the man-portable Thanix? _

She smiled. 'You are so smart, Alice.' The beam was nearly ship-grade in terms of strength – she'd seen the projections on Tali's omnitool. It could have taken apart the army of husks in seconds. _But why not the flying ones? The only explanation is that they must have flown over it. _Looking she could see them using some form of heavy beam weapon, smashing into a krogan warrior and out the other side.

_But how tough are these insectoid husks' armour? This sword cut through a banshee with some ease. I think that maybe, maybe I might be able to help. _

_Though I'll need to get there first. _

While the threat of the husks had been diminished by the application of overwhelming firepower, many were still pouring from the building, and while the teams' attentions were on the flying husks, there was a risk they'd be flanked.

_I cannot kill them all myself...but maybe I can put a dent in their numbers. _

Liara had, after three corridors, two laboratories, and three husks, checked the sword to see if it was one of the more heavily modified ones they had found rather than those identical to the ones the Cerberus Phantoms used.

It was, thankfully. Less joyfully, it was the one meant to be used by a tech expert, with careful links for omnitool coding. But given how weak her biotics were due to her constant attempts to use them, she could barely hold up a barrier. Perhaps this was better.

_Of course I've still got to work out how to use it, because currently all I know is that it somehow channels and releases electricity. _She flicked open her omnitool, and cautiously scanned for devices she could link into. The sword appeared, and she selected it.

It hummed in her hand.

The omnitool wasn't much use – it didn't tell her much other than that the device was now powered, and to utilise it as was required. Even running a program she'd picked up from her ship on Hagalaz merely informed her that the sword would now do whatever it was supposed to do.

Looking round the doorway revealed the situation was much the same. Several more flying ones had appeared, along with the more familiar silhouettes of Harvesters. The husks from the facility were being cut down by something, someone, but it was not halting their advance. _I must do something. I might tip the balance in their favour. _

A flash of red hair in the chaos made up Liara's mind. _I'll let Shepard see what I can do. I'll let her see that I'm fine. I'll let her see that being pregnant, being in love with her, being here will not hinder me, it will drive me on, it will help her. Something she should damn well know by now. _

She stepped out and into the sun, the dazzle glaring against her eyes for a second. But she was already stepping forward, legs jarring with each impact, running down the slope of the entrance, sidestepping the rubble and fire. Her path was blocked by a Cannibal, mouth open in a distorted roar of rage. Liara brought the sword up in a sweeping cut, slicing open the Cannibal's front and sending it staggering backwards.

Then her omnitool registered a drop in power and suddenly the sword shimmered blue with flickering sparks. Something shot from it whip fast, and then there was an overload burst in front of her, electricity wrapping round the concrete and the Cannibal's flesh, launching it into the air, then another beyond it sending another two flying, a third staggering a Marauder, a fourth detonating against only empty air. A small bar at the edge of her HUD began to fill itself.

_So that's what it does. _Suddenly her chances against the crowd of husks who'd noticed her didn't seem so bad. The bar crept towards fullness as she ran forward, her backswing catching the Marauder's neck and slicing off its head. A Ravager's laser sights swung towards her, and she ducked into cover, map warning her of the husk that rounded the corner. The bar was almost full, so she merely hammered it in the face with the hilt, watching it stagger back, then – swing.

The second time it was even more impressive, the bursts sending the mass of bodies hurtling in all directions. Even the Ravager staggered against such an assault. Her HUD flickered through the projected strength displays – the human Husks were outright dead, the Cannibals too. All the others were weakened.

A gun stutter and her shields shrank and she ducked back down again. _Idiot, don't just stand there, or they'll shoot you. _A quick peak round the corner revealed the source of the shots to be a group of the biotic husks, several aiming towards Shepard, the rest down towards her. She ducked back as they fired again. One even grazed the edge of her kinetic barriers, slamming through a weakness in the concrete block she hid behind. Her legs burned as she propelled herself upright and over the cover, shots smacking into it around her.

_And...now! _The third slash tore into them, paralysing them as the energy coursed through the remnants of their nervous system. A few seconds of movement and then she was among them, sword swinging up and round. There were eight of them, packed closely together – her first swung cut three of them apart.

But the other husks were attacking too – gunfire from Marauders slammed into her shields, and she ducked back behind the biotic husks, letting them absorb the shots. A fourth and fifth fell, but the sixth launched a warp into her at such close range she couldn't avoid it. She could feel the roiling gravity ripping into her shields as she cleaved through the husk's neck. The other two had backed away and were preparing to fire as she triggered her sword's burst once again, and under the cover of its blue crackling strength, dived into cover.

_This isn't quite going as planned. _She looked round the corner of the block of stone she was crouched behind. Her shields flickered and died as a storm of shots impacted against them. A roar and a series of heavy footsteps announced a Brute's arrival. Her eyes flickered to the bar that indicated progress towards another burst from her sword – it was still only half full.

Another roar, and something vast and silver and red shot over her. She stood, prepared to cut into it, but a stream of blue from behind her distracted her. A voice rumbled from behind her, polite but firm, speaking Asari with a slight accent. 'I am afraid I do not know your nomenclature, but may I ask you to move out of my line of fire?'

'Liara.' She glared at the yahg, stepped aside, and began to sprint towards Shepard once again, so she wouldn't have to look at or listen to the damned yahg. 'My name is Liara.'

Her muscles were aflame, but it didn't matter, because now Shepard wouldn't know. She'd think it was just the yahg, that Liara couldn't take care of herself, and she would continue to be a complete idiot. Or maybe half of one. _Damnit, why did we have the yahg at all? _

A husk crossed her path, and her sword cut through it, unleashed its burst of electricity. The explosions smashed through a small clump of Cannibals. Swarmers were crushed underfoot. Her biotics were returning to her slowly, recovering from their overtaxing, and so when a Cannibal opened fire she was able to knock it to the floor for long enough that she could reach it and separate its head from its body.

'Liara!' Shepard, mere metres away, gun roaring as she fired on the flying husks, making an arm gesture back at the laboratory, omnitool glowing. Liara squashed the threads of desire that suddenly flowed together at the sight of her, a flame haired goddess of destruction. 'Get to the shuttle!'

_Well, that feeling of warmth went away pretty quickly_. 'I'm fine!' She ran the last few places, slid into a rock just before the blue beams hit her.

'Your shoulder's bleeding, your armour's broken in several places, and my HUD's telling me that you've got almost no biotic barrier because you've overtaxed yourself. And no ammo. How you got back here only that hurt is probably some sort of miracle.'

'Or I'm capable of taking care of myself.' Internally some part of her asked her whether this was the best place for a row. She told it to shut up, and then a number of other things she'd heard Vega say about the Reapers. Though she wasn't certain how a part of her psyche could fuck itself sideways with a rake.

'Liara –' Shepard didn't have time to say any more, because it was then that the grey thing dropped out of the sky, eyes glowing blue, skin flickering with purple hexagons, landing between them. It raised its claws and shrieked.

Liara slashed with her sword, already springing upward to her feet despite the protests from her body. Electricity crackled across it, and it took a step backwards, its shriek rising. Her sword cut around and into one of its legs, slicing through it and leaving fluid dripping on the ground, then with a twist of her arms she blocked the next swing. A burst of biotics launched her up onto its back as it tried to take off, and her sword cut deep into its head before it had risen a metre from the ground. It shook frantically, but Liara's hands were clenched tight around the sword and didn't slip from it, wouldn't slip from it. Finally, a burst of electricity ran down the blade, and the creature quivered as its nervous system was fried.

The husk crashed to the ground, Liara atop it. She glared at Shepard who stared at her open-mouthed for a second. 'You're capable of taking care of yourself,' she said finally.

'Thank you.' She slid off the husk.

'Indeed,' came a rumbling voice. 'You – good.'

She turned and found herself face to face with the silver and red shape of the yahg who'd almost strangled her to death. She tried to prevent the shock from showing on her face, prevent her eyes from widening in fear. _They can read body language, they can know what I'm thinking, and if it knows I'm afraid of it, then that's bad. They don't respect fear, and what they don't respect they destroy. You know this, you know this! _But it couldn't prevent the tightening in her throat, the shiver of cold down her spine.

She made a noise that might have been assent. The thing nodded, then bounded past her and into another one of the huge grey floating things.

And then there was Shepard, her arms around her, her lips on hers. Driving away the darkness, holding back the fear, sealing the breach between them. Drawing away and whispering 'I'm sorry for being an idiot.'

Liara smiled. 'We all are sometimes.'

'If I can interrupt, Commander.' EDI's voice, with a hint of amusement. 'Praetorian forces cleared, and with Liara, Shade, and Bahranik present we are now only waiting for Lieutenant Vega. Once he arrives –'

And then the front of the laboratory exploded.

* * *

><p>Shepard had managed to pull Liara to the ground the second that she'd registered the sound of the front of the building collapsing. She hadn't even known what it was at first, not properly, not till her brain disengaged from the warm fuzzy <em>Liara's alive, Liara's alive, Liara's a badass, yay<em> it had been running through. Debris rained around them, huge chunks of concrete and ceramic. She heard a cry from nearby, but the dust cloud was so thick she couldn't see anything other than the edge of Liara that wasn't trapped under her body and the ground.

A long fog-horn blast of noise. A flicker of red light through the dust.

This time it was Liara who dragged her aside just as the beam passed by where they'd been, spraying her with debris. The dust was beginning to clear, but her HUD was now flickering frantically, trying to deal with some sort of interference.

'What –' Liara still managed to look beautiful, covered in white dust, and out of breath from being thrown to the ground.

'Micro-reaper. We think.' Comms were still down – more down than before even. Shruiken had been out by the lab, but appeared to be ok. Certainly the buttons on her HUD still seemed intact, despite the sudden interference. Carefully she linked to its camera.

Darkness. Cracks of light. She cautiously sent the command to begin spinning, and for a second more light became visible. Then the rubble collapsed away from Shruiken, allowing it and her to see out at what was beyond.

The foot was large, enormous from Shruiken's perspective. Objectively Shepard knew that it was tiny for the claw of a Reaper, but her brain was already running calculations. _The thing must be over twenty metres tall, at least. _The foot shifted.

'We've got incoming,' she shouted. 'Report!'

Tali, appearing out of the dust, Thanix already in her arms. 'Here Commander.' She'd crouched behind some rubble. 'I can't get a good shot with all the dust.' EDI appeared behind her, Hurricane in hand.

Shepard's eyes flicked to the small view of the vast foot. A plan began to form.

'Tali, on my mark, get ready to fire. A long burst – like you did before.'

'I can't see anything!'

She smiled. 'Trust me.' She eased Shruiken forward with her mind, and for the first time really saw it, the micro-reaper. _Or don't. _

It was shaped like the bastard lovechild of a lobster and a praying mantis – long dovetailed end, legs folded underneath, stretching up almost vertically till two long claws, doubled and folded, sprouted from its black metal shoulders, crunching into the concrete. Its head was nonexistent, only a malevolent red light set in its chest some fifteen metres above the ground.

It was also stuck. The majority of the building had collapsed on top of it, and its front claws were pulling trying to get it free. Its legs worked desperately in the rubble. For a moment she wondered why it wasn't simply blasting free, then she saw the soft, hurried flickers of its eye. _It's trying to be sneaky...huh. _

She glanced round with her own eyes and saw Tali, braced but confused, Liara, just confused, and EDI, whose eyes were widening in comprehension.

_Now or never. _

'Mark!'

A blue beam across Shruiken's vision, to the left of the monstrosity. Its claws began to unfold, slowly, ponderously, its body straighten, shedding the building like one might shuck a quilt. 'Tali, move it right.' The beam speared round, searing the front of what was left of the laboratory, moving closer and closer to the thing and then –

- impacting with the glimmers of a rising kinetic barrier for half a second then petering out. 'Keep firing, keep firing!' Its claws raised in the bottom right of her HUD, and she thought that through the fading dust cloud she could see its shadow.

Then the beam hit again, and for a second it staggered back, there was a roar from nearby and a shout in the distance, and then long lines of fire were tracing out its shape against the dust, Krogan battle chants echoing across the sky. Some vast blue ball of light slammed into those kinetic barriers, now visible not just through Shuriken's eyes but her own, so she set the thing loose. A whirring spinning image as it roared towards the micro-reaper.

And then it fired back.

She had about one whole complete instance between seeing something flicker at the end of its claw and the impact. One whole moment in which to swear loudly and internally at the goddamn Catalyst, the Council, her family, batarians, and whatever deities might or might not exist. Then she was hit by the familiar impact she normally associated with orbital strikes in her vicinity, the all-over body punch that made being worked over by a krogan seem like a soothing massage by comparison, and then the inevitable flying through the air. More dust, but now that ringing in her ears she'd come to associate with temporary explosives based deafness.

She began to sit up, and was knocked back down by another dull thud that echoed across her soundscape, shook the ground beneath her. Shruiken's image had vanished in a hailstorm of static – her entire HUD had. Dust, rocks – pieces of metal too, blue and white..._the shuttle, fuck, the shuttle's gone. _Sitting up, _where's Liara, where,_ hands pushing at the ground, _get the fuck UP_, and then her Mattock in her hands. Its holographs were gone, and then it folded itself together like a neat wind-up toy, refusing to work. She slapped the release button – nothing.

Something behind her – she could feel it, in that part of her that was still biotic but that she shouldn't use, a mass in her vicinity. Pivoting, attempting to trigger an omni-blade, _nothing, fuck_, settling for her bare hand.

Shade caught it easily. His Spitfire rested in his hands, and his lips were moving, but all she could hear was a soft growling burble. She gestured forward, pointed at him, and set off herself. He moved to follow her, and she was almost surprised when his gun fired, the piercing sounds cutting through her dull, muffled hearing. _Where's Liara? _

A dead body – krogan, _not Grunt, thank you God_, curled up around a vast piece of metal that had punched straight through him, lying curled on the ground. It emerged out of the dust as she moved. Her fingers ached for a weapon, something, anything. Another body, metallic, fragile, eyes closed. _Oh no, not EDI...no, no no. _

_She's fine! She's on the Normandy! That body was like an omnitool – useful, not __her_. But dread filled her, even as her hearing was restored. Cries through the smoke and dust – bursts of muffled gunfire, the sound of biotics. And that horrible sickening buzzsaw sound, the one that heralded Harbinger's assault on Hammer, and Sovreign, and every other Reaper she'd faced. Growing closer and closer and –

'Fuck!' She dived sideways just in time, an oof behind her telling her that Shade had copied her motion. His burbling was still incomprehensible, but now recognisable as asari. _Something's knocked out our omnitools. Informational attack? EMP? They're shielded against both, or should be. _The red beam passed so close to her that all it would have taken was a twitch of her leg, and she would've been ash.

A shape through the dust, familiar. Tali, sprinting backwards, Thanix in hand. A steady stream of cursewords pouring from her mouth, familiar in their unfamiliarity. And as she drew close Shepard saw why.

She'd taken off her mask. Tali's purple-tinged skin was exposed to the dust and air and bacteria. _As was she. _

'Fuck fuck fuck! Shepard, my mask shattered, and then the backup wouldn't work, and the anti-biotics – none of it worked, all the automated systems shut down! My omnitool and Chittika too – oh, bosh'la yutet –'

'You know English?' For English it was, strange, with a completely different accent to the one the translator gave Tali, almost oriental, with shades of turian twang colouring the swearing.

'Never mind that!' Tali was virtually dancing with frustration. 'What do we do about –'

And then Shepard's armour seized up. She could feel it trying to force itself back into its locker position, pushing against unwilling joints. She forced herself to relax as she, once again, keeled over into the dirt. Her arms straightened themselves, her legs too. Her barriers glimmered, then shut down. The sky was faintly visible overhead through the dust.

A foghorn, distant. Tali, shouting something, Shade shouting something else. One by one Shepard felt the modifications Cerberus had made to her begin to shut down. First the cybernetic joints in the legs, then those in the arms. With a sudden shock her organs began to shut up shop as those clever, terrible, dangerous cybernetics seized up. With a blink and stutter her eyesight disappeared, then her hearing, her smell.

Eventually only her mind was left, screaming and winding down towards oblivion, and her biotics. Something fierce and red and violent pulsated their, smacking aside the intrusion that had shut down the rest of her. But she was somewhat preoccupied with other things.

_I'm going to die. I'm actually going to die this time, and it really will be for nothing. _

A voice. How could she hear anything? But there it was. It took her a little while to work out what it was saying.

'-if I die doing this, you're going to owe me more than a drink at that bar Shepard, you're going to owe me a whole rack of them.' Twanging, angry. 'EDI thought that might happen to you given what happened to her. Thing is, she's smarter than the bug thought. Hold on a second...'

Vision. Light. Alice gasped, a deep intake of air as her back curved off the ground as the pain of her dying, oxygen deprived organs finally hit her, held back by the nervous system failure that had caused their near-destruction. Sound. Her HUD, flickering back into place. Shruiken's camera, flicking on. A vast black shape, rearing over them, weapons fire tracing it. A triumphant chuckle through her in-ear radio.

'Tell Vega I didn't steal this move.'

Then a shuttle dove from the sky like the fist of god and smacked into the micro-reaper's chest, exploding with all the force of a missile.

The thing didn't just stagger. It rocked backwards, over and down onto the ground, like it had been laid out with a punch. The fire still blossomed in the air above it, but from the flame dropped a shape, a shape that suddenly sprouted the blue light of a grav-chute.

Someone in blue armour hit the ground not more than a metre from her, rolled, grav chute slipping off their shoulders.

Garrus flashed her one of those wide as hell, turian-fuck-you grins he was so good at. 'I'm back.'


End file.
